LEST       F.WARD 


A  PERSONAL  SKETCH 


EMILY  PALMER  CAPE 


(LIBRARY 


Lester  F.  Ward 
From  a  photograph  taken  when  69  years  of  age 


LESTER  F.  WARD 

A  PERSONAL  SKETCH 


By 
EMILY  PALMER  GAPE 

Author  of  "Fairy  Surprises  for  Little  Folks," 

"  The  Art  of  Chirography,"  and  Co-editor 

of  "Glimpses  of  the  Cosmos" 


ILLUSTRATED 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 

3be   •Knickerbocker    press 

1922 


Copyright,  1922 

by 
G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

Made  in  the  United  States  of  America 


- 


This  book  I  dedicate  to  my  husband,  my  son, 
and  my  daughter: 

HENRY  CAPE 
HENRY  CAPE,  JR. 
MARY  STORY  CAPE 

who  shared  the  friendship  of  Dr.  Ward  with 
me  and  often  enjoyed  his  charming  conversation 
and  delightful  companionship  while  visiting  at 
our  home. 


** .  .  .  in  going  down  into  the  secrets  of  his 
own  mind  he  has  descended  into  the  secrets  of  all 
minds.  He  learns  that  he  who  has  mastered  any 
law  in  his  private  thoughts,  is  master  to  that 
extent  of  all  men  whose  language  he  speaks, 
and  of  all  into  whose  language  his  own  can  be 
translated." 

RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON. 
"THE  AMERICAN  SCHOLAR." 


[v 


PREFACE 

IN  sending  this  to  the  publishers,  it  is  with 
a  keen  sense  that  the  results  are  far  from 
drawing  near  to  the  ideal  of  what  I  had 
indeed  looked  forward  to  for  years,  but  as 
explained  in  the  Foreword  the  means  through 
which  this  was  to  have  been  accomplished 
was  suddenly  wiped  out,  and  yet  with  the 
completing  now  of  my  efforts  I  feel  deeply 
that  there  is  a  silent  power  in  the  words  of 
great  men  and  that  ideas  freely  spoken,  when 
from  a  love  of  Truth  and  a  sincerity  of  spirit, 
cannot  help  but  carry  a  far  reaching  effect  on 
life. 

It  is  therefore  to  the  student,  and  the 
general  reader  who  is  always  interested  in 
the  more  intimate  thoughts  of  noted  person- 
alities, that  this  book  will  appeal, 
[vii] 


preface 

In  conclusion,  I  desire  to  express  my 
appreciation  of  the  kindly  suggestions  and 
helpfulness  I  have  received  from  my  friends 
Professors  Franklin  H.  Giddings,  Ira  W. 
Howerth,  James  Q.  Dealey  and  H.  L. 
Koopman. 

E.  P.  C. 

NEW  YORK  CITY 

January  1922. 


viii] 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

FOREWORD   .....         1 

LETTER     FROM    PROF.    JAMES    Q. 
DEALEY    .....       11 

CHAPTER 

I. — BIOGRAPHICAL  NOTES    ...       17 
II. — PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS  .          .       39 

LETTER   FROM    DR.   FRANKLIN    H. 
GIDDINGS  ....       67 

III. — "MY  ONLY  DESIRE  is  TO   KNOW 

THE  TRUTH  "     .         .         .         .71 

IV. — PARAGRAPHS    FROM    UNPUBLISHED 

PAGES 89 

V. — SYSTEM  OF  PHILOSOPHY         .         .     139 

VI. — CONTINUITY          .         .         .         .181 

VII.— "THE  WARD  ROOM"    .         .         .197 

LETTER  FROM  PROF.  H.  L.  KOOPMAN     199 


[ix] 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

LESTER  F.  WARD  .          .          .          Frontispiece 

From  a  photograph   taken  when   69  years 
of  age. 

FACING 

PAGE 
VlEW    OF    THE    HOUSE    IN    WHICH    LESTER 

F.  WARD  WAS  BORN  ....       20 

From  a  photograph. 

LESTER  F.  WARD  .....       48 

From  a  photograph  taken  when   45  years 
of  age. 

ENTRANCE  TO  THE  "WARD  ROOM"  .         .     198 
THE  OLD  CHAIR  204 


xi] 


Lester  F.  Ward 
A  Personal  Sketch 


FOREWORD 


[1] 


FOREWORD 

THOSE  who  take  up  this  book  expecting  to 
learn  something  more  about  the  personal 
side  of  Lester  F.  Ward  are  entitled  to  know 
how  the  author  came  to  undertake  the 
writing  of  the  following  pages. 

For  several  years  I  was  closely  associated 
with  Dr.  Ward  as  co-editor  of  his  work  en- 
titled, Glimpses  of  the  Cosmos,  six  volumes 
published  by  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  New 
York  and  London,  1913:  Comprising  his 
minor  contributions  and  biographical  and 
historical  sketches  of  all  his  writings.  Month 
after  month  I  worked  with  him.  We  went 
through  all  his  personal  papers.  I  found  in 
the  wonderful  and  beautiful  friendship  thus 
developed  a  revelation  of  qualities  of  mind 
and  heart  which  could  be  perceived  only 
through  intimate  and  harmonious  relations. 
[3] 


Heater  Jf.  Mlarb 

Naturally  I  learned  much  of  the  man  and  of 
his  life.  He  of  ten  told  me :  "No  one  has  ever 
gone  over  every  detail  of  my  life's  journey 
as  you  have." 

There  is  an  important  fact  which  must  be 
explained  so  that  those  who  know  and  admire 
his  work  may  appreciate  why  the  following 
sketch  is  not  so  complete  as  I  hoped  it  might 
be.  Ward  had  the  habit  of  keeping  a  diary. 
This  was  to  him  one  of  the  most  important 
matters  of  his  life.  Never  did  a  day  pass  but 
a  few  lines  were  inscribed.  No  matter  how 
tired  he  was  at  night,  always  before  retiring 
he  would  note  down  his  doings  of  the  day. 
When  I  was  at  Madison,  Wisconsin,  working 
with  him  at  the  University,  and  when  he  was 
staying  at  my  summer  home  for  several  weeks, 
I  noticed  that  he  never  let  an  evening  slip 
by  without  making  "his  entry,"  as  he  called 
it,  "while,"  as  he  remarked,  "things  are 
fresh  in  the  mind."  This  practice  he  en- 
forced upon  himself  from  early  manhood. 

Thus  he  filled  a  large  number  of  hard, 
paper-covered  blank  books  (about  3^  in.  by 
[41 


3  personal  &>fef  tcf) 

6  in.  in  size).  These  contained  many  fine 
thoughts,  criticisms  of  books,  people,  places, 
etc.,  and  mentioned,  often  in  a  most  witty 
way,  experiences  he  had  in  his  travels. 

They  contained  also  many  original  ideas 
about  the  countries  he  had  visited  and  con- 
siderable data  concerning  each;  something 
about  all  the  great  conventions  he  had  at- 
tended, in  some  of  which  he  had  been  presi- 
dent, and  of  the  many  societies  of  which  he 
had  been  a  member,  in  different  parts  of  the 
world;  names  of  the  noted  people  he  had  met, 
and  often  remarks  upon  their  conversation. 
All  through  the  pages  there  were  little  signs 
and  symbols  which  he  had  explained  to  me, 
so  that  I  might  know  just  where  to  turn  to 
his  private  letters  and  papers  for  more  de- 
tails. No  one  else  ever  went  through  all  these 
books  with  him,  or  understood  the  private 
markings.  These  diaries  I  expected  to  use  in 
the  preparation  of  his  biography."1 

1  On  February  20,  1911,  in  replying  to  my  asking  him  to 
write  his  autobiography,  he  says:  "I  don't  want  to  write 
my  autobiography  and  have  it  appear  while  I  am  alive. 
It  doesn't  seem  the  thing  to  do.  You  are  the  one  to  write 

[51 


Hesiter  Jf . 

When  serious  illness  took  him  from  his 
University  duties,  he  wrote  me  of  his  having 
to  leave  Providence  and  asked  me  to  meet 
him  at  the  station  on  his  arrival  in  New 
York.  Never  shall  I  forget  that  early  morn- 
ing when  he  arrived.  He  was  so  weak  that  I 
asked:  "May  I  not  go  on  to  Washington  with 
you?  I  fear  to  have  you  go  alone."  But  he 
said  No,  that  when  rested  he  would  feel  better, 
and  could  go  on  very  well  by  himself.  He 
grew  better  as  we  chatted,  and  asked  me  to 
open  his  satchel  so  that  he  could  hand  me  a 
bundle  of  papers  and  letters  he  wanted  to  give 
me.  Then  he  said:  "I  hope  to  return  soon, 
but  you  know  where  all  my  papers,  diaries, 
and  letters  are,  and  what  to  do  with  them  at 
any  time."  I  did  not  like  to  talk  of  these 
things  then.  When  the  train  time  came  he 
seemed  much  brighter  and  bade  me  adieu. 

After  a  few  weeks  of  severe  illness  in 
Washington,  where  he  had  gone  to  the  home 

my  biography  from  all  the  data  that  I  shall  leave,  but  it 
will  be  done  after  I  have  left  them."  (The  "data"  signi- 
fied the  diaries.  The  above  italics  are  in  Dr.  Ward's 
letter.) 

[6] 


&  ^personal 

of  his  wife,  who  had  been  an  invalid  for  some 
time,  he  passed  away.1 

After  his  death  the  diaries,  those  pages 
written  so  faithfully  for  years  by  the  great 
soul  who  had  even  wished  that  they  might 
go  down  to  posterity  in  his  own  handwriting, 
and  which  I  was  to  have  handed  finally  to 
the  Congressional  Library  at  Washington, 
where  all  the  manuscripts  of  his  great  books 
now  are,  were,  sad  to  relate,  destroyed.  For 
this  reason  I  am  unable  to  give  to  the  world 
as  much  concerning  Dr.  Ward  as  I  expected 
to  give. 

One  other  point  I  feel  it  is  necessary  to 
make  clear.  In  giving  to  others  a  closer 
knowledge  of  Dr.  Ward,  and  the  many  re- 
markable and  splendid  thoughts  expressed 
in  friendly  association,  it  was  impossible  not 
to  introduce  a  certain  amount  of  the  per- 
sonality of  the  author  of  this  book.  To  have 
omitted  every  mention  of  self,  would  have 
been  to  lose  to  the  world  many  of  the  most 

1  Rosamond  Asenath  Simons  was  married  to  Lester  F. 
Ward  as  his  second  wife  in  the  year  1873. 

[7] 


tester  Jf . 

beautiful  feelings  and  most  profound  truths 
expressed  so  clearly  by  Dr.  Ward  in  private 
letters  and  in  conversation.  Accordingly 
there  was  no  choice  but  to  risk  the  seeming 
self-obtrusion,  and  hope  that  those  who  read 
will  be  generous  enough  to  believe  that  the 
author  would  prefer  to  remain  in  the  back- 
ground and  feels  modestly  in  regard  to  her 
personal  relations  with  the  great  man  of 
whom  she  writes. 

Several  brief  biographical  sketches  of  Dr. 
Ward  have  been  published,  and  a  general 
survey  of  his  life  and  work  may  be  found  in 
Vol.  I  of  Glimpses  of  the  Cosmos,  under  the 
title  "Personal  Remark." 

From  the  many  letters  and  much  data  in 
my  possession  I  shall  be  able  to  offer  a  more 
intimate  portrait,  and  thus  share  with  those 
who  feel  a  sincere  admiration  for  him,  and 
give  to  future  generations  who  may  study  his 
noble  works,  some  facts  in  regard  to  his  life, 
and  many  of  his  thoughts  never  before  in 
print.  Of  a  thought  expressed  in  a  letter  he 
would  sometimes  say:  "Save  this  and  use  it 
[8] 


&  personal 

in  the  future  for  I  have  never  expressed  the 
idea  so  clearly,  or  perhaps  so  originally 
before." 

Quotations  from  these  personal  letters  will 
reveal  inner  qualities,  thoughts  and  emotions, 
which  a  man  of  Lester  Ward's  nature  seldom 
shows  to  the  world  at  large.  Thus  to  many 
may  be  brought  a  new  vision  of  the  man  who 
took  but  few  into  his  confidence  and  lived  the 
last  years  of  his  life  very  much  alone. 

He  had  a  large  number  of  letters  from 
students  and  friends,  and  from  persons  whom 
he  had  never  met,  but  who  had  read  his 
books,  begging  him  to  tell  them  of  his  per- 
sonality, of  his  life  and  of  his  personal  emo- 
tions and  his  opinions  on  present  day 
conditions. 

After  reading  to  me  such  letters  he  would 
sometimes  say:  "Not  now,  but  after  I  am 
gone  you  may  tell  them,  for  I  seem  of  so  little 
importance  to  myself;  yet  I  too  have  felt 
about  others  as  they  seem  to  feel  about  me." 

As  I  had  no  intention  of  writing  a  critical 
account  of  Dr.  Ward  and  his  contributions 
[9] 


Heater  Jf .  ffliarb 

to  science  and  philosophy,  I  have  not  bur- 
dened my  pages  with  references,  not  even 
when  quoting  from  his  published  works. 

Dr.  Ward's  emotional  nature  was  sublime, 
and  only  one  knowing  him  through  the  heart 
as  through  the  brain,  realized  how  the  follow- 
ing pages  will  reveal  that  nothing  is  more 
true  of  Lester  F.  Ward  than  that  he  had: 
"The  mind  of  a  sage,  the  heart  of  a  woman, 
the  soul  of  a  poet." 

EMILY  PALMER  CAPE. 


[10] 


LETTER  FROM 

PROF.  JAMES  Q.  DEALEY 


[11 


BROWN  UNIVERSITY, 

January  5,  1922. 

MY  DEAR  MRS.  CAPE: 

I  am  delighted  to  know  that  you  have  just 
completed  your  manuscript  giving  sidelights  on 
the  life  and  personality  of  Lester  F.  Ward. 
Knowing  him  intimately,  as  I  did  during  his 
seven  years  at  Brown  University,  I  realize  that 
there  were  many  aspects  of  his  character  not 
necessarily  revealed  in  his  formal  writings.  He 
was,  for  example,  really  fond  of  social  life  but 
was  so  absorbed  in  his  work  that  to  a  quite  large 
extent  he  lived  a  lonely  life  during  his  last  years 
and  was  seldom  found  in  social  circles  except 
those  connected  with  the  university.  On  the 
other  hand  he  was  always  glad  to  receive  callers 
at  his  rooms  and  many  students  availed  them- 
selves of  this  privilege. 

He  had  a  deeply  emotional  nature,  but  sup- 
pressed by  his  close  devotion  to  intellectual 
pursuits,  yet  when  the  news  of  his  wife's  serious 
illness  came  to  him,  he  wept  like  a  child  in  my 
home  in  telling  me  of  her  condition.  This  same 
tender  heartedness  was  shown  in  his  almost 
[13] 


Hester  $ . 

bashful  fondness  of  children,  and  in  his  sympathy 
with  sorrowing  friends. 

At  Brown  University  he  used  to  enjoy  the 
daily  chapel  service  led  by  President  Faunce 
and  was  most  faithful  in  attendance.  He  once 
confided  to  me  that  he  had  planned  to  write  a 
short  volume  on  Religion,  expressing  his  concep- 
tion as  to  what  sort  of  religion  a  scientist  might 
hold,  based  on  scientific  teachings  rather  than  on 
supposed  revelations.  It  surely  would  have 
been  interesting  if  he  had  had  time  to  work  out 
the  ideas  he  had  in  mind.  He  once  jokingly 
remarked  that  he  needed  about  fifty  years 
additional  of  life  in  order  to  complete  all  the 
writings  for  which  he  was  collecting  material. 

In  matters  of  duty  he  had  a  Stoic  conception 
of  obligation.  He  was  seldom  absent  from  his 
classes  and  was  most  systematic  in  the  prepara- 
tion of  his  lectures.  He  once  tried  to  arise  from 
a  sick  bed  so  as  to  meet  his  classes  and  was 
induced  to  remain  only  on  my  promise  that  I 
would  lecture  to  them  myself,  so  that  the  young 
men  would  not  be  disappointed.  He  little  sus- 
pected how  students  enjoy  "cuts"  even  from 
favorite  teachers.  Almost  up  to  the  time  of  his 
death  he  gave  his  lectures  as  usual,  though  he 
could  barely  put  one  foot  before  another  and 
could  hardly  carry  the  weight  of  his  books. 
The  news  of  his  death  brought  great  sorrow  to 
the  Campus  for  all  realized  that  a  great  scholar 
[14] 


3  Personal 

had  lived  among  them  and  would  never  be  seen 
again  in  body.  The  students  of  his  day  will 
always  remember  his  tall  form,  slightly  stooped, 
advancing  slowly  along  the  campus  path,  green 
bag  under  his  arm,  and  his  big  blue  eyes  almost 
hidden  under  the  slouch  hat  he  preferred  to  wear. 
These  hats  he  used  to  purchase  at  Paris,  he  said ; 
at  intervals,  I  suspect,  of  about  seven  years. 

Let  me  again,  Mrs.  Cape,  express  my  pleasure 
that  you  have  completed  your  Sketches;  I  trust 
that  they  will  make  the  great  Sociologist  known 
in  character  as  well  as  through  his  intellectual 
achievements. 

Yours  sincerely, 

JAMES  Q.  DEALEY. 


[15] 


CHAPTER  I 

BIOGRAPHICAL  NOTES 


17 


tester  Jf. 


CHAPTER  I 

BIOGRAPHICAL   NOTES 

THOSE  we  call  great  men  stand  above  the 
immeasurable  multitude  and  the  same  laurel 
crowns  them  all.  A  common  language  is 
theirs,  a  higher  fellowship  exists  among  them. 
They  know  nothing  of  castes,  of  kings,  or 
pariahs,  and  each  holds  in  the  strength  of  his 
simplicity  a  torch  whose  light  shows  the  way 
to  those  who  seek  the  path  of  true  progress. 

When  on  April  18,  1913,  the  news  went 
forth  of  the  death  of  Lester  F.  Ward,  many 
in  all  parts  of  the  world  felt  the  pain  that 
comes  with  the  loss  of  a  noble  friend. 

Lester  Frank  Ward  was  born  in  Joliet,  111., 
June  18,  1841.  He  was  the  tenth  and  last 
[19] 


Hester  Jf .  3Uarfc 

child  of  a  family  of  good  blood  but  not 
wealthy.  When  he  was  a  year  old  his  parents, 
Justus  Ward  and  Silence  Rolph  Ward,  moved 
nearer  Chicago,  to  a  place  called  Cass,  now 
known  as  Downer's  Grove,  about  twenty- 
three  miles  from  Lake  Michigan.  Dr.  Ward 
often  spoke  of  his  humble  origin  and  some- 
times in  his  lectures  he  would  remark  that 
he  was  "a  true  Pleb."  As  he  says  in  Glimpses 
of  the  Cosmos,  p.  Ixvi, 

My  mind  has  always  been  trimmed  toward 
the  future  rather  than  the  past.  [And  continues 
on  the  same  page]:  Firmly  convinced  for  most 
of  my  life  that  the  human  race  has  been  ascend- 
ing, and  not  descending,  I  have  cared  little  for  my 
ancestors,  except  in  a  biological  sense.  But  I 
have  always  had  a  horror  of  degeneracy,  the 
proof  of  which,  in  certain  individuals,  families, 
and  even  communities,  is  manifest.  Pride  of 
ancestry  is  a  mark  of  degeneracy.  One  of  Robert 
G.  Ingersoll's  bright  epigrams  was  that  those 
who  are  most  proud  of  their  ancestors  usually 
have  nothing  but  ancestors  to  be  proud  of. 
When  asked  if  my  lack  of  interest  in  genealogy 
was  due  to  the  fear  that  my  ancestors  might 
prove  to  be  low,  I  always  answered  that  it  was 
[20] 


a 

J 
•ji 

13 


rather  from  fear  that  they  might  prove  to  be 
eminent,  and  I  degenerate.1 

A  remote  ancestor  Andrew  Ward,  born  in 
1597,  played  a  somewhat  important  role  in 
the  Colonial  history  of  Connecticut.  He  led 
a  band  of  early  American  settlers  along  the 
coast  from  where  the  eastern  line  of  Bridge- 
port and  New  Haven  now  is,  to  a  section  near 
Stamford.  He  was  buried  in  a  cemetery  of 
the  town  of  Fairfield,  Conn.,  where  he  lived 
longest,  and  where  he  died.  In  June,  1907, 
a  monument  was  erected  to  his  memory.  I 
accompanied  Dr.  Ward  on  a  visit  to  the  grave 
of  this  ancestor,  and  as  we  stood  by  the  grave, 
Dr.  Ward  said:  "And  he  too  wanted  to  free 
humanity." 

Lester  Ward's  father  owned  a  large  mill 
on  what  was  named  Ward's  Creek,  and 
sawed  the  wood  for  the  "  bridge-to wpath," 
and  also,  as  Dr.  Ward  once  told  me,  he  was 
the  brains  that  engineered  this  big  work. 

1  Silence  Rolph,  his  mother,  was  the  daughter  of  a  clergy- 
man, scholarly,  refined  and  fond  of  literary  pursuits,  of 
high  attainments,  with  versatility  of  gifts  and  accom- 
plishments. 

[21] 


Jf . 

Once  when  Dr.  Ward  was  visiting  my 
country  home,  in  Stamford,  Conn.,  as  we 
were  sitting  on  the  porch  of  my  studio  on  the 
shore,  he  talked  at  length  of  those  early  days 
and  spoke  as  if  he  could  see  and  hear  the 
mill  sawing  the  logs  into  their  various  lengths. 
Then  he  quietly  remarked:  "How  I  used  to 
ask  questions,  and  how  I  wanted  to  help!" 
and  smiled  at  the  recollection. 

When  about  nine  years  old  young  Lester 
(his  comrades  used  to  call  him  by  his  middle 
name,  Frank)  went  to  school  at  St.  Charles, 
Kane  Co.,  111.,  about  1850.  He  remained 
there  until  1854. 

To  those  who  knew  him  well  it  was  delight- 
ful to  sit  and  hear  the  widely  renowned 
sociologist  tell  of  his  early  youth.  His  first 
school  books  he  would  describe  in  detail: 
Saunders*  Readers  and  Olney's  Geography  at 
Cass;  at  St.  Charles,  McGuffey's  Readers 
(1st,  2nd  and  3rd).  With  a  quiet  twinkle  in 
his  keen  and  kindly  eye,  he  would  relate 
many  a  story  of  his  childhood,  and  smile 
over  the  difficulties  he  had  encountered  in 
[22] 


&  personal 

attempts  to  satisfy  his  innate  desire  for 
knowledge. 

From  St.  Charles,  his  father,  mother  and 
elder  brother,  Erastus,  and  Lester,  journeyed 
in  a  canvas  covered  wagon  to  Iowa,  and  re- 
mained there  until  his  father's  death  in 
January,  1858. 

In  speaking  of  this  period  of  his  life  he 
enjoyed  bringing  back  memories  of  the 
thoughts  and  feelings  such  primitive  ex- 
periences awakened.  He  and  his  brother,  he 
said,  often  talked  over  their  futures,  and  dis- 
cussed how  they  were  to  see  the  world. 

After  the  father's  death,  the  boys,  Erastus 
and  Lester  (Frank)  returned  to  the  little 
homestead  at  St.  Charles  with  which  the 
family  had  never  parted.  There  was  an 
especial  affinity  between  these  two  brothers. 
A  love  that  is  seldom  known  between  men 
enriched  their  lives;  and  though  their  minds 
developed  in  different  directions,  for  Erastus 
was  naturally  a  mathematician,  and  Lester 
was  a  splendid  linguist  and  philosopher,  their 
genuine  characters,  love  of  truth,  sincerity 
[23] 


Hester  $ .  81arb 

and  desire  for  knowledge,  united  them  so 
closely  that  Dr.  Ward  never  spoke  of  that 
brother  without  a  tenderness  which  was 
beautiful  to  see. 

In  this  little  homestead  these  two  boys 
kept  house  alone,  keeping  "bachelor's  hall," 
as  he  laughingly  told  me.  Every  moment 
they  could  possibly  put  upon  study  they 
did.  Their  mother  lived  with  a  daughter 
two  miles  distant,  under  very  straitened  cir- 
cumstances. The  boys  supported  themselves, 
Lester  by  farm  work,  Erastus  by  machine 
work.  They  tried  to  save  enough  in  the 
summer  to  pay  for  their  schooling  in  the 
winter. 

What  a  deep  longing  to  know  inspired  these 
boys,  with  so  few  school  advantages!  They 
read  and  talked  until  late  at  night,  and  often 
ate  less  food  than  they  really  needed,  in  order 
to  buy  a  book  they  desired. 

In  a  letter  to  me,  April  17,  1912,  Dr.  Ward 
writes : 

I  was  (in  youth)  hampered  by  poverty  and  ad- 
versity, by  the  necessity  of  earning  a  living,  by 
[24] 


being  born  in  a  backward  region,  and  having 
to  find  my  way  to  a  more  enlightened  one. 

It  was  at  St.  Charles  that  "The  Span- 
iard's Revenge  "  was  written  (1858) .  It  is  his 
first  published  literary  production.  It  is  re- 
printed in  Vol.  I  of  Glimpses  of  the  Cosmos. 

In  1858,  Cyrenus,  another  brother  (my 
"big  brother,"  as  Dr.  Ward  called  him), 
nine  years  older  than  Lester,  begged  the  two 
young  brothers  to  come  to  Myersburg,  near 
Wysox,  five  miles  from  the  town  of  Towanda, 
Pa.,  and  help  him  in  a  factory  for  making 
wagon-hubs.  There  was  a  promised  chance 
of  going  to  college  in  a  few  years.  They  went 
and  worked  faithfully,  not  only  learning  every 
part  of  the  business,  but  turning  their  hands 
to  other  kinds  of  work  too. 

The  boys  were  disappointed  in  the  general 
management  of  the  affair,  and  left  with  only 
wagon-hubs  as  pay.  In  the  words  of  Dr. 
Ward:  "this  business  failed  at  the  end  of 
two  years,  leaving  us  two  years  older  and  no 
nearer  college."  Not  being  able  to  dispose 
of  the  hubs,  the  outlook  financially  was  very 
[25] 


ICesrter  Jf . 

discouraging,  and  in  1860  Lester,  foreseeing 
the  crash  six  months  in  advance,  withdrew 
and  started  to  teach  in  a  country  school. 
After  doing  farm  work  in  the  summer  and 
teaching  school  in  winter,  Lester  saved 
enough  money  to  go  to  the  Susquehanna 
Collegiate  Institute,  Towanda,  Bradford 
County,  Pa.,  for  the  spring  and  fall  terms. 
During  the  summer  vacation  he  worked  at 
haying  and  harvesting  for  farmers. 

Here  I  may  refer  to  a  conversation  with 
Dr.  Ward  one  evening  after  a  busy  morning 
at  Columbia  University,  where  he  was 
lecturing,  and  a  busy  afternoon,  too,  in  our 
work  on  Glimpses  of  the  Cosmos.  He  had 
talked  of  so  many  various  subjects,  and  all 
in  such  a  broad,  big-visioned  way,  that  I 
remarked  how  wonderful  it  was  that  he  was 
so  learned  on  so  many  subjects,  and  that  ever 
since  he  was  a  youth  he  had  been  a  natural 
leader  of  thought.  He  sat  a  few  moments  in 
silence  and  then  quietly  told  me  of  the  great 
surprise  he  had  had  when  a  young  man,  in 
finding  that  his  knowledge,  largely  self- 


&  personal 

gathered  before  entering  the  "Susquehanna 
Collegiate  Institute,"  caused  his  rapid  pro- 
motion in  his  classes.  He  said  that  before 
he  entered  he  was  shy  about  meeting  the 
other  students,  as  he  felt  his  lack  of  what  they 
had  had  in  academic  training.  But  as  he  said : 
"  It  is  the  honesty  of  purpose,  the  depth  of  the 
desire,  and  the  thoroughness  of  the  work  that 
counts." 

He  had  four  terms  at  this  Institute.  Then 
came  the  strong  desire  to  enter  Lafayette 
College,  at  Easton,  Pa.  He  worked  hard  to 
prepare  for  entrance,  but  the  War  of  the 
Rebellion  came  on  and  in  1862  both  Erastus 
and  Lester  went  to  the  front. 

Lester  was  wounded.  Some  of  his  corre- 
spondence from  the  hospital  may  be  read  in 
Glimpses  of  the  Cosmos  and  it  is  remarkable 
how  even  in  those  immature  productions  the 
greatness  of  the  soul  of  the  man  may  be  felt. 

Any  question  of  emancipation,  of  freedom 

for  humanity,  always  keenly  appealed  to  him. 

One  evening  after  several  hours  of  work,  he 

spoke  of  his  entrance  into  the  War  of  the 

[271 


Rebellion.  It  was  an  experience  he  never 
could  forget,  for  he  was  deeply  in  love  at  the 
time  with  a  young  woman,  his  first  wife.  The 
call  to  the  colors  was  strong  in  his  soul,  so 
the  two  young  people  married  at  once,  and 
Lester  left  immediately  for  the  battle  line. 

I  can  hear  Dr.  Ward  now,  his  head  resting 
on  his  hand  and  the  light  shining  over  his 
face  saying:  "She  was  so  noble,  helped  me  so 
splendidly  to  go!  I  shall  never  forget;  it  was 
a  hard  thing  to  live  through."  Then  it  was 
that  the  first  real  love  entered  his  life.  Mrs. 
Ward's  maiden  name  was  Elizabeth  Carolyn 
Vought.  He  always  lovingly  spoke  of  her  as 
Lizzie. x  She  was  a  bright,  intelligent  woman 
who  loved  to  read  aloud  and  to  study  with 
her  husband. 

Writing  on  August  13,  1912,  after  consult- 
ing his  diary,  he  says: 

Just  fifty  years  ago  to-day,  Aug.  13,  1862,  I 
was  married  to  the  woman  who  first  called  out 

1  The  youngest  of  6ve  sisters.  She  was  born  in  Wysox, 
Bradford  County,  Pa.,  in  1842,  died  in  Washington,  D.  C., 
1872,  and  was  buried  in  Rome,  Pa. 

[28] 


3  Personal 

the  romantic  sentiment  in  me.  The  ten  years 
(out  of  which  came  the  nearly  three  years  that 
I  was  in  the  army,  for  I  went  to  war  immediately 
after  we  were  married)  that  I  lived  with  her, 
forms  a  very  memorable  part  of  my  life.  I  was 
especially  reminded  of  it  now,  because  the 
Iconoclast1  work  all  came  in  that  period.  She 
was  as  liberal  as  I,  and  actually  contributed  some 
articles  and  poems  to  the  Iconoclast. 

The  articles  for  the  Iconoclast  (see  Glimpses 
of  the  Cosmos  Vol.  I.)  were  particularly  re- 
markable for  the  period  of  history  in  which 
they  were  written.  The  broader  views  of 
the  interpretation  of  the  Bible  had  not  been 
accepted.  The  rational  and  scientific  progress 
of  our  day,  bringing  religious  liberty  to  many, 
was  only  in  its  earlier  stages.  Thus  Lester 
Ward  was  among  the  first  of  his  generation 
who  struck  a  blow  at  superstition  and  ignor- 
ance. 

In  the  opening  words  of  his  Salutatory 
editorial  in  the  first  number  of  Iconoclast, 
March,  1870,  he  says: 

1  "Iconoclast"  articles  in  Glimpses  of  the  Cosmos,  Put- 
nam Pub. 

[29] 


Hester  $ . 

In  this  age  of  rational  and  scientific  progress 
it  seems  eminently  fitting  that  organs  of  mental 
and  religious  liberty  should  be  multiplied  to  keep 
pace  with  the  spirit  of  inquiry.  ...  If  we 
attack  superstition  it  is  because  we  regard  it  as 
an  enemy  to  the  human  race. 

Lester  and  Lizzie  studied  French  together. 
During  the  ten  years  of  their  married  life  the 
young  couple  often  laughed  and  chatted  over 
their  love-letters,  all  written  in  French. 
They  were  very  proud  of  them,  as  they  felt 
that  the  foreign  language  gave  them  a  certain 
privacy,  and  evinced  an  accomplishment 
which  few  in  those  days  possessed.1  She  bore 
him  one  child,  a  boy,  who  lived  not  quite  a 
year. 

During  the  last  few  years  of  Dr.  Ward's 
life  he  turned  more  and  more  to  thoughts  of 
his  first  wife,  and  the  sacrifices  she  made  for 
him  in  those  early  years.  He  kept  a  portrait 
of  her  to  the  very  last,  the  only  picture  on  the 
wall  of  his  own  room  at  Brown  University. 

1  I  have  read  all  these  letters.  Nothing  was  ever  sweeter, 
more  sincere,  or  more  full  of  thought  and  charm. 

[30] 


&  personal  g>fcetcf) 

He  often  told  me  that  the  face  was  very 
beautiful  to  him. 

After  the  war  he  settled  in  Washington, 
and  worked  for  the  Government. 

During  the  next  few  years  he  had  little 
time  to  devote  to  his  own  study,  yet  he 
attended  the  Columbian,  now  the  George 
Washington  University,  graduating  in  1869 
with  the  degree  of  A.B.  In  1871  he  received 
the  degree  of  LL.B.  and  was  admitted  to  the 
bar  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  the  District  of 
Columbia,  and  that  of  A.M.  in  1873.  From 
then  until  1881  he  continued  his  studies, 
specializing  in  botany.  In  1881  he  was  made 
Assistant  Geologist  of  the  United  States 
Geological  Survey,  a  post  which  he  held  for 
two  years,  when  he  became  Geologist.  In 
1892,  he  was  made  Paleontologist.  He  held 
this  position  until  1906,  when  he  resigned  to 
accept  the  chair  of  Sociology  at  Brown 
University. 

From  early  youth  questions  of  humanity 
interested  him.  In  each  subject  he  took  up 
he  had  in  mind  some  special  relationship  it 
[31] 


Hester  Jf .  Jlarb 

should  have  to  his  one  particular  goal,  the 
developing  of  his  great  system  of  Sociology. 
It  is  most  remarkable  how  he  kept  such  a 
steady  flame  of  conscious  purpose  during  all 
his  many  years  of  study,  to  make  the  crown- 
ing science  of  his  life  and  work  stand  at  the 
very  summit  of  the  hierarchy  of  the  sciences 
about  which  he  wrote  so  much.  He  was  an 
expert  botanist,  and  his  many  scientific 
articles  on  botanical  subjects  made  those  who 
knew  not  of  his  other  works  call  him  "the 
botanist."1  But  sociology  was  his  main 
interest.  He  labored  fifteen  years  to  com- 
plete his  Dynamic  Sociology,  so  anxious  was 
he  to  make  it  as  nearly  perfect  as  possible, 
and  so  deep  was  his  desire  to  think  out  each 
position  clearly. 

An  interesting  account  of  the  burning  of  the 
volumes  of  Dynamic  Sociology  in  Russia, 
may  be  read  in  the  preface  of  the  first  volume. 
Surely  it  was  an  unconscious  honor  to  their 

1  He  was  also  a  geologist,  and  on  the  subjects  of  biology, 
anthropology,  and  psychology,  he  wrote  numerous  articles 
many  of  which  may  be  found  in  Glimpses  of  the  Cosmos. 

[32] 


3  personal 

author  to  attribute  such  power  to  his  books 
that  it  was  thought  necessary  to  burn  them. 

His  system  of  philosophy  is  set  forth  in  his 
Sociological  volumes,  Dynamic  Sociology, 
1883,  The  Psychic  Factors  of  Civilization,  1893, 
Outlines  of  Sociology,  1898,  Pure  Sociology, 
1903,  Applied  Sociology,  1906,  but  these, 
though  the  most  important  of  his  writings, 
are  but  a  fraction  of  the  gigantic  amount  of 
work  he  left  behind  him. 

Anyone  who  turns  to  the  volumes  of 
Glimpses  of  the  Cosmos,  will  appreciate  the 
remarkable  range  of  subjects  he  was  inter- 
ested in,  and  upon  which  he  wrote  with 
knowledge  and  originality.  It  was  the  noted 
sociologist  and  philosopher  of  Austria,  Lud- 
wig  Gumplowicz,  who  wrote  of  Dr.  Ward, 
after  a  long  talk  with  him,  that  he  was  a 
"giant  of  intellect."  Perhaps  no  two  essays 
can  give  a  better  idea  of  his  masterly  mind 
than  those  entitled:  Status  of  the  Mind 
Problem  and  The  Natural  Storage  of  Energy 
(Vol.  V,  Gl.  of  Cos.).  One  day  when  talking 
on  the  problems  of  the  mind,  while  we  were 
3  [33] 


Hester  Jf . 

on  the  shore  of  Lake  Mendota,  Madison, 
Wisconsin,  he  said  to  me : 

If  I  have  any  copies  left  I  will  send  you  on 
my  return  to  Providence,  my  Status  of  the  Mind 
Problem,  and  also  The  Natural  Storage  of  Energy. 
They  are  as  carefully  worked  out  as  anything  I 
ever  wrote,  [and  then  smiling  he  added]:  But 
you  must  not  think  I  want  you  to  like  them. 

His  acquaintance  with  people  throughout 
the  world  was  as  wide  and  varied  as  the  sub- 
jects on  which  he  wrote. 

He  counted  among  his  friends  such  men  as 
Herbert  Spencer,  and  Ernst  Haeckel,  both  of 
whom  he  knew  personally,  and  with  whom  he 
corresponded.  His  works  were  translated 
into  many  languages,  French,  German,  Ital- 
ian, Spanish,  Russian  and  even  Japanese. 
The  people  of  Japan  are  remarkably  well 
acquainted  with  his  philosophy. 

Dr.  Ward  was  a  fellow  of  the  American 
Association  for  the  Advancement  of  Science, 
a  member  of  the  National  Academy  of 
Science,  of  the  Anthropological,  Biological 
and  Geological  Societies  of  Washington;  of 
[34] 


3  $3crsonal 

some  of  these  he  was  President.  He  was  the 
first  President  of  the  American  Sociological 
Society.  In  the  American  Philosophical 
Society,  the  American  Economic  Association, 
and  the  International  Geological  Congress 
he  was  looked  upon  as  a  great  power. 

While  at  Brown  University  he  was  invited 
to  become  a  member  of  the  famous  Greek 
letter  Society,  Phi  Beta  Kappa,  but  declined 
the  honor;  I  heard  it  remarked  by  others 
that  it  was  the  first  time  in  the  dignified 
old  society's  history  that  anyone  had  even 
thought  of  not  accepting  such  an  honor.  His 
declination  was  not  due  to  any  lack  of  appre- 
ciation of  the  honor,  but  simply  to  the  fact 
that  he  had  already  had  all  the  experience  of 
clubs  and  associations  that  he  desired.  He 
was  living  near  the  end  of  his  career,  and  was 
giving  his  entire  thought  to  the  perfecting 
of  the  work  he  was  so  deeply  interested 
in. 

In  1900  he  was  elected  President  of  L'ln- 
stitut  Internationale  de  Sociologie,  in  France. 
In  1903  he  was  elected  President  of  and  pre- 
[35] 


Hejster  Jf .  fllarb 

sided  over  the  fifth  Congress  of  this  Society 
at  the  Sorbonne  in  Paris. 

After  Dr.  Ward  accepted  the  chair  of 
Sociology  at  Brown  University,  Providence, 
R.  I.,  every  one  who  met  him  there  was 
drawn  toward  him  in  sympathy  and  admira- 
tion. It  was  noticeable  as  one  walked  along 
the  streets  of  Providence  with  him,  that  the 
distinguished  looking  old  gentleman  with  the 
soft  black  hat  and  long  black  coat  was  known 
to  nearly  everyone.  Many  times  the  pedes- 
trian would  turn  and  gaze.  Sometimes, 
while  standing  on  a  street  corner  waiting  for 
the  traffic  to  pass,  one  would  hear:  "There, 
that  tall  man  is  Dr.  Ward."  Yet  he  seldom 
noticed  anyone  as  he  went  along,  always 
walking  rapidly  and  thinking  of  something 
that  was  far  from  the  passersby. 

After  his  death,  I  prepared  the  following 
statement  which  appeared  in  New  York  and 
London  papers: 

From  our  midst  has  passed  a  striking  figure,  a 
great  soul,  one  who  was  far  in  advance  of  his  age. 
It  is  as  true  with  men  as  it  is  true  in  nature  and 
[36] 


&  ^personal 

art,  that  whatever  attracts  us  of  a  high  order  is 
felt  through  a  certain  power  most  difficult  to 
analyze.  A  melody  is  breathed  forth,  and  the 
violin's  notes  awake  us  to  a  sense  of  delicious 
joy.  A  beautiful  landscape  is  seen  and  we  are 
conscious  of  gathering  to  ourselves  a  calm,  a 
loveliness,  a  strength  which  though  silent  is  real. 
It  is  this  way  with  a  truly  great  man,  a  sense  of 
gain,  of  enlargement,  of  uplifting  penetrates  us 
and  we  are  the  better,  nobler  for  having  crossed 
his  path.  Thus  everyone  who  ever  knew  Dr. 
Ward  felt  that  helpfulness  and  strength  which 
alone  shines  out  to  the  world  from  the  soul  of  a 
true  genius.  His  life  was  given  to  humanity,  he 
longed  to  show  men  the  way  of  nobler  living. 
Grimm  has  said,  "The  study  of  history  is  the 
contemplation  of  events  as  they  stand  in  relation 
to  great  men, "  and  in  the  future  when  men  truly 
begin  to  realize  the  vast  amount  of  benefit  the 
works  of  Lester  F.  Ward  will  do  for  humanity, 
his  name  will  be  as  a  torch  which  lightens  the 
way  for  all  toward  progress. 


[37] 


CHAPTER  II 

PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS 


[39] 


CHAPTER  II 

PERSONAL   CHARACTERISTICS 

THE  characteristics  of  great  men  differ  in 
accordance  with  their  temperament,  their 
nationality,  and  their  environment.  But  all 
great  souls  have  certain  traits  which  are  basic 
in  their  natures:  earnestness  of  purpose,  the 
power  of  inhibition,  unconquerable  will,  and 
courage.  These  were  all  highly  developed 
characteristics  in  Lester  Ward. 

The  warm  spirit  and  genuine  love  for  man 
which  the  pages  of  Dynamic  Sociology  every- 
where breathe  involuntarily  causes  a  picture  to 
arise  before  the  reader's  mind  of  a  large-hearted, 
and  at  the  same  time,  liberal  and  broad-spirited 
man,  whom  it  would  be  an  honor  to  know  per- 
sonally and  who  ought  to  be  popular  with  those 
whose  good  fortune  it  is  to  be  brought  into  daily 
contact  with  him.  A  book  like  that,  full  of 
thought  rich  in  information,  catholic  in  tone, 
[41] 


Heater 


logical  in  method  and  scholarly  in  style,  goes 
even  further  than  this,  and  reflects  an  image 
not  only  of  the  author's  mental  and  moral  na- 
ture, but  even  of  his  personal  appearance,  and 
although  this  image  is  far  less  likely  to  be  just 
than  is  the  other,  still  it  may  often  be  not  very 
wide  of  the  truth.  Those  who  have  pictured 
Mr.  Ward  as  a  full-size  man  of  large  frame,  six 
feet  in  his  stockings,  with  broad  shoulders,  full 
chest  and  frank  open  countenance  have  cor- 
rectly divined  the  bodily  source  of  the  magazine 
of  wisdom  and  learning  from  which  their  idea 
was  drawn. 

Blessed  with  a  splendid  constitution  and 
excellent  health,  a  fine  example  of  the  mens  sana 
in  corpore  sano,  nature  has  done  for  him  what  no 
amount  of  education  could  ever  do,  and  the  solid 
character  of  his  work  is  the  natural  product  of 
his  solid  and  all-sided  nature.  Shall  the  reader 
thirst  for  further  details  he  may  be  told  that  the 
color  of  Ward's  eyes  is  now  gray,  whatever  it 
may  have  been  at  birth,  that  his  hair  is  brown, 
now  becoming  sprinkled  with  silver  threads, 
that  his  teeth  are  sound,  regular  and  white,  so 
much  so  as  to  have  several  times  given  the  im- 
pression of  being  false,  and  that  his  neck  is  short, 
which  prevents  him  from  looking  as  tall  as  he  is. 
The  slight  forward  projection  of  the  head  which 
he  seems  sometimes  to  exhibit  he  believes  to  be 
due  to  his  early  hard  labor  and  incessant  study, 
[42] 


&  Personal 

and  to  this  he  adds  a  curious  theory  which  de- 
serves mention  as  illustrating  his  character. 
He  says  "that  only  conceited  people  are  per- 
fectly erect.  The  modest  mind  never  dwells  long 
on  the  appearance  of  the  body.  It  is  absorbed 
in  objective  contemplation  or  in  work  that  al- 
most always  bows  the  head  forward,  and  most 
abstracted  people,  as  well  as  those  who  lead 
servile  lives,  stoop  or  become  more  or  less  bent 
forward. 

Perhaps  the  remark  that  all  truly  great 
men  are  simple  and  childlike,  may  be  made 
with  particular  emphasis  of  Lester  Ward.  He 
never  showed  the  least  sign  of  pride  or  ag- 
gressiveness in  asserting  his  tremendous 
knowledge.  He  would  often  sit  silently, 
listening  to  others  talk,  and  then,  if  asked 
what  he  thought  about  the  subject  under 
discussion,  would  calmly  and  simply  place 
the  whole  matter  in  relief,  apparently  visual- 
izing it  as  an  artist,  and  then  proceed  to 
elucidate  it  as  only  a  master-mind  could  do. 

His  nature  was  childlike  in  its  love  of 
romance.  When  walking  through  the  forest, 
he,  so  tall  and  strong,  and  I  by  his  side  so 
[43] 


Hester  Jf . 

small,  he  would  merrily  say  that  he  was  the 
stag  and  I  the  fawn,  and  then  recite  a  long 
passage  from  the  Lady  of  the  Lake.  Then, 
throwing  back  his  head,  he  would  laugh  with 
glee  at  remembering  the  lines  he  had  not 
thought  of  for  many  years.  Then  perhaps  an 
interesting  talk  on  memory  and  all  its  various 
aspects  would  ensue. 

He  loved  nature,  and  to  be  out  of  doors; 
when  taking  the  long  walks  we  often  did,  he 
would  remove  his  hat,  if  it  was  not  too  hot, 
and  as  we  walked  through  the  wild  fields, 
deep  woods  or  rough  brush  and  brambles,  he 
always  had  some  particular  point  to  reach 
which  he  knew  would  reveal  some  lovely 
vista  or  interesting  geological  formation,  or 
exceptional  flower  or  tree. 

At  every  splendid  old  rock  or  well  un- 
covered stratum,  he  would  stop  and  give  me 
a  long  and  beautiful  description  of  the  earth 
at  the  time  of  that  particular  formation. 
Every  bush  and  tree  had  a  meaning,  in  its 
development.  A  lesson  on  the  evolution  of 
sex  in  plants  was  something  wonderful  to  hear. 
[44] 


&  $3ersonal 

If  he  found  a  young  bird  fallen  from  its  nest, 
he  would  stoop,  pick  it  up  gently  and  replace 
it.  Insects  furnished  delightful  studies  on  our 
walks.  I  shall  never  forget  my  mentioning 
to  him  a  certain  flying  insect  as  a  "big  bug." 
He  was  so  disgusted  that  anyone  should  not 
know  the  difference  between  the  various 
groups  or  families  of  insects.  Then  and  there 
I  had  to  learn  the  names  and  description  of 
each  class.  Many  times  on  our  country 
tramps  Dr.  Ward  would  speak  again  and 
again  of  the  loss  to  people  in  not  being  taught 
the  simple  laws  of  life  and  of  the  things  about 
them  everywhere.  "It  is  wrong,"  he  said, 
"that  every  young  person  does  not  know  the 
simple  truths  of  botany  and  geology  and 
astronomy,  the  natural  scientific  facts  of  their 
own  native  environment."  He  always 
stressed  the  power  of  an  education  which 
teaches  a  knowledge  of  the  materials  and  forces 
of  nature,  and  their  relation  to  our  own  lives. 

He  hated  fighting  for  the  sake  of  fighting, 
and  disliked  all  sports  that  had  the  least  tinge 
of  cruelty  or  pain.  He  originated  the  word 
[45] 


jf . 

Philalgia,  viz.:  the  love  of  pain,  and  often 
traced  the  diminishing  thread  of  cruelty 
through  advancing  civilization. 

The  sense  of  joy  in  pain-giving  in  early  barbarous 
tribes,  the  horrors  in  early  Chinese  punishment, 
the  Spanish  Inquisition,  the  gladiatorial  shows 
in  Rome,  the  treatment  of  the  serfs  in  feudal 
times,  prison  methods,  bull  fights,  and  even  some 
of  our  own  sports  in  which  the  possible  danger  of 
injury,  as  in  football,  gives  a  touch  of  interest 
and  excitement. 

One  evening,  after  having'seen  at  the  Cen- 
tury Theatre  in  New  York  the  play,  much 
talked  of  then,  called  The  Nigger,  he  inter- 
preted the  story  and  spoke  of  the  deep  truth 
in  the  law  of  the  assimilation  of  races,  and 
dwelt  a  moment  on  the  distant  ^future  which 
he  believed  would  bring  a  true  assimilation  of 
all  peoples  of  the  globe.    Then  he  dwelt  upon 
another  thought:  the  natural  fight  that  ever 
goes  on  against  all  progress,  how  everything 
advances  through  struggle  and  opposition. 
Then  he  added:  "The  knowledge  of  the  Telic 
method  would  so  benefit  the  race." 
[46] 


His  system  of  teaching  in  university  classes 
was  unique.  He  used  cards  on  each  of  which 
was  a  topic,  a  reference  perhaps,  and  a  leading 
thought.  These  cards  could  readily  be  ad- 
justed to  the  length  of  his  lecture.  Each 
group  of  them  contained  a  full  outline  of  the 
subject  discussed.  They  have  been  preserved 
and  are  now  in  the  "Ward  Room"  at  Brown 
University.  I  have  used  many  of  them  in  my 
own  classes  and  have  thought  of  publishing 
them  so  that  others  could  use  them.  Each 
card  is  valuable  not  only  on  account  of  what 
it  contained  but  also  on  account  of  its  being 
a  link  in  the  chain  of  his  development  of  the 
entire  subject. 

He  had  the  ability  to  express  concisely  and 
on  the  spur  of  the  moment  any  thought  he 
wished  to  clothe  in  words.  Ideas  jotted  down 
in  his  notebooks  were  often  transferred  to  his 
book  without  change  in  their  forms  of  ex- 
pression. The  following  thoughts  were  writ- 
ten out  one  day  when  I  asked  him  to 
inscribe  something  original  in  my  "Ward 
Set." 

[47] 


Hester  $ .  Slarb 

Dynamic  Sociology,  Volume  I. 

It  is  the  ceaseless  striving  of  man  to  satisfy 
his  wants,  it  is  effort,  conation,  that  transforms 
the  environment  and  brings  about  civilization. 

Dynamic  Sociology,  Volume  II. 

Universal  education  is  the  true  lever  of  pro- 
gress. It  lifts  all  to  the  highest  level  attained  by 
any. 

The  Psychic  Factors  of  Civilization 

The  hungry  soul  craves  rest,  and  the  most 
perfect  rest  comes  from  a  recognition  of  the 
absolute  continuity  of  nature. 

Outlines  of  Sociology 

Inspiration  is  necessary  to  all  thorough  work. 
It  is  the  fire  of  the  soul  that  burns  every  problem 
to  the  socket. 

Pure  Sociology 

Whatever  is  worth  being  is  worth  knowing. 
True  purity  consists  in  a  complete  knowledge 
of  real  things. 

Applied  Sociology 

Genius  without  self-respect  is  sterile.  A  just 
estimate  of  one's  powers  is  an  essential  prere- 
quisite to  achievement. 

[48] 


Lester  F.  Ward 
From  a  photograph  taken  when  45  years  of  age 


0  ^Personal 

A  Text  Book  of  Sociology 

Great  thoughts  demand  great  books,  but  in  a 
busy  world  they  may  be  distilled. 

He  made  a  deep  study  of  the  sciences  in 
order  to  become  a  truer  and  finer  philosopher. 
All  knowledge  was  to  be  used  for  the  sake  of 
Humanity.  He  did  not  love  human  beings  as 
Walt  Whitman  did,  en  masse,  but  he  felt 
there  was  a  great  potential  power  in  the  genus 
homo  and  he  longed  to  give  of  his  best,  to 
awaken  others  and  to  share  with  them  what- 
ever wisdom  he  had  gathered.  He  loved  the 
humble  and  those  desirous  of  knowledge. 

When  traveling  he  preferred  a  day  coach, 
because  he  felt  a  sense  of  democracy  with  the 
people  who  could  not  afford  a  pullman.  For 
the  same  reason  he  always  preferred  to  carry 
his  own  satchel,  no  matter  how  heavy  it  was, 
because,  as  he  often  said:  "I  dislike  the  idea 
of  a  porter  when  I  am  able  to  carry  my 
own  luggage;  it  is  so  false  a  standard  of 
service." 

Once  he  was  asked,  by  a  student  at  one  of 
his  lectures,  if  his  own  life  did  not  prove  the 
4  [49] 


Heater  Jf .  Marti 

very  reverse  of  what  he  taught  regarding 
environment;  that  is,  that  the  environment 
more  than  heredity  makes  the  man.  Dr. 
Ward  smiled  and  said:  "No,  it  is  true  I  have 
accomplished  a  certain  amount,  but  who 
knows  what  I  might  have  done  if  my  mind 
had  not  had  to  put  forth  so  much  effort  and 
time  on  the  daily  necessities  of  life?" 

Those  who  knew  him  closely  realized  his 
deep  pleasure  in  all  the  elemental  forces  of 
nature.  He  enjoyed  a  heavy  storm,  and 
would  stand  in  the  window  or  out  on  the 
porch  whenever  there  was  heavy  thunder  or 
vivid  lightning.  When  at  sea,  the  last  time 
he  went  to  Europe  he  wrote:  "the  immensity 
of  space,  the  tremendous  waves,  and  the 
sublime  starry  heavens  impress  me  with  a 
sense  of  cosmic  unity  that  fills  me  with  life 
and  infinite  joy." 

In  conversation  one  often  wished  for  an 
invisible  note-book,  to  note  down  so  many 
fine  sentences  and  such  quick  exchanges. 
When  asked  if  he  did  not  think  that  to  be 
good  was  sufficient  religion,  he  replied: 
[50] 


3  Personal 

"Negative  good  is  of  little  use;  one  should  be 
positively  good" 

In  his  study  at  Brown  University  the  pho- 
tographs of  Darwin,  Huxley,  Comte,  Haeckel, 
Vauvenargues,  Condorcet  and  Spencer  were 
placed  over  his  bookshelves,  and  while  we 
were  at  work  he  often  when  reaching  to  get 
a  book,  would  touch  one  of  the  portraits  and 
make  some  loving  remark  as  if  his  mind  felt  a 
sense  of  nearness  and  admiration  for  these 
mental  friends. 

He  once  remarked  that  he  did  not  care  for 
Browning.  Because,  as  he  said:  "I  do  not 
understand  him."  One  day  in  one  of  his 
classes  in  Columbia  University,  a  student 
quoted  certain  lines  from  Browning  and 
asked  him  what  he  thought  they  meant? 
Dr.  Ward  glanced  over  the  room  and  saw  me 
sitting  toward  the  back  of  the  class.  Then 
with  a  smile,  he  said:  "I  refer  you  to  Mrs. 
Cape.  I  know  little  of  Browning's  poems." 
After  the  class  he  seemed  to  enjoy  the  little 
joke  he  had  made  at  my  expense,  and  we 
laughed  over  it  together. 
[51] 


Hester  tf. 

Walt  Whitman  was  a  poet  he  never  learned 
to  read  until  late  in  his  life.  He  did  not  par- 
ticularly admire  Leaves  of  Grass  but  certain 
lines  he  would  pick  out  for  their  strength  and 
sincerity.  "Whitman  was  a  man  of  fearless 
thought,"  he  would  say. 

There  lingers  over  the  names  of  some  men 
something  that  like  a  breeze  blowing  off  the 
shores,  stirs  and  inspires  us  to  action  and  to 
finer  thoughts.  Such  is  the  name  of  Lester 
Ward  to  those  who  knew  him.  No  one  can 
read  his  books  or  essays  without  feeling  a 
tang  of  mental  exhilaration  breathing  into 
his  very  being.  When  it  was  once  remarked 
to  him  that  his  writings  seemed  to  move  one 
to  the  very  depths,  he  replied:  "I  never  wrote 
anything  except  what  I,  myself,  felt  deeply." 
He  never  wrote  a  book  "on  order,"  seldom 
a  short  article.  He  used  to  say  he  wrote  only 
after  he  was  so  full  of  his  subject  that  it 
would  not  stay  in,  until  he  was  forced  by  the 
necessity  of  expression  to  write  what  he  felt 
and  thought. 

Dr.  Ward  had  a  keen  sense  of  humor  which 
[52] 


&  personal 

it  was  delicious  to  awaken.  He  had  so  many 
funny  stories  to  tell  that  they  never  seemed  to 
end.  On  a  walk  beyond  Providence,  R.  L, 
one  day  I  happened  to  be  very  quiet,  enjoy- 
ing the  scenery.  He  interrupted  my  silence 
by  telling  me  this  story: 

I  knew  a  professor  once  who  was  noted  for  going 
on  long  journeys  and  never  saying  a  word.  I 
invited  him  to  go  for  a  walk  and  made  up  my 
mind  I  would  not  say  a  word  unless  he  spoke. 
We  walked  along  for  a  full  hour  and  a  half;  I 
led  him  to  a  most  beautiful  point  of  land  jutting 
into  the  water.  This  lovely  neck  of  land  had 
been  used  as  a  graveyard.  When  we  came  to  the 
charming  view,  and  the  professor  saw  the  many 
graves,  he  turned  to  me  and  said:  "It  is  a 
horrible  shame  to  think  that  the  dead  should 
show  so  little  respect  to  the  living!" 

A  story  he  enjoyed  telling  was  of  a  meeting 
with  Haeckel,  the  great  biologist,  and  Ost- 
wald,  the  noted  chemist.  They  were  dis- 
cussing the  subject  of  helping  humanity,  and 
the  word  that  would  best  express  the  method 
to  be  pursued,  and  Haeckel  said:  "Genesis," 
[53] 


Ostwald  replied:  "Analysis,"  and  Ward 
answered:  "Synthesis." 

On  being  accused  of  inconsistencies,  be- 
cause of  some  minor  things  in  his  books,  on 
which  he  had  later  changed  his  mind,  he 
retorted:  "I  never  want  to  be  a  mule  tied  to 
a  post." 

On  page  52  of  Glimpses  of  the  Cosmos 
(Vol.  I)  Dr.  Ward  mentions  my  having  helped 
him  in  finding  some  of  the  "appropriate 
literary  ornaments"  for  his  work.  In  one 
instance  he  was  much  pleased,  and  laughed 
heartily  at  the  way  I  discovered  the  particu- 
lar essay  in  which  a  thought  from  Emerson 
was  found.  He  had  the  quotation  but  did  not 
know  the  essay  in  which  to  find  it.  So  he 
sent  it  to  me  thinking  I  might  know.  The 
words  are:  "Be  a  good  animal."  I  hunted 
through  my  volumes  of  Emerson,  and  not 
finding  it  I  reasoned  this  way:  to  be  a  good 
animal  a  man  must  be  a  gentleman,  and  to  be 
a  gentleman  a  man  must  have  manners.  So 
I  turned  to  the  Essay  on  Manners,  and  there 
found  the  words.  We  had  a  merry  laugh  over 
[54] 


&  personal 

the  way  I  found  the  sentence,  and  a  good  long 
talk  over  its  deeper  meaning. 

The  sense  of  unity,  of  continuity  in  life 
and  thought  was  very  strong  in  him.  The 
quotations  illustrating  this  unity  and  con- 
tinuity, which  he  called  "embellishments," 
placed  at  the  opening  of  the  chapters  of  his 
books,  were  most  carefully  selected.  He 
often  spoke  of  them  as  "glimpses  of  truth 
dropped  along  the  wayside  of  time." 

One  day,  as  we  were  seated  on  the  grass  by 
a  beautiful  pond,  as  they  call  the  lakes  about 
Providence,  and  leaning  against  some  old 
trees,  I  was  reading  aloud  to  him  the  opening 
chapters  of  Heights  and  Depths,  a  novel  of 
mine.  Before  each  chapter  I  had  placed  a 
quotation  to  suggest  the  theme.  I  noticed  his 
eyes  fill  with  tears,  and  he  said:  "It  is  so 
beautiful,  the  way  you  have  worked  the 
unity  of  thought  through  every  'embellish- 
ment,' into  your  story,  that  it  fills  me  with 
emotion,  as  the  great  thought  of  unity  and 
continuity  ever  does!" 

Comradeship  of  thought  was  a  keen  delight 
[55] 


Hester  Jf . 

to  him,  a  "glory  of  life."  One  evening  on  his 
last  trip  to  Europe  he  wrote  from  his  state- 
room, "talked  with  his  pencil,"  saying,  that 
to  feel  he  could  "talk  on  paper"  and  express 
his  ideas  as  in  conversation,  was  "a  joy  he 
would  not  shorten  even  for  a  walk  on  deck 
to-night." 

Ward  made  free  use  of  the  Library  of  Con- 
gress. He  often  went  there  to  perfect  his 
writings  in  the  matter  of  finding  and  verifying 
quotations;  to  study  botanical  subjects;  to 
find  books'  titles,  dates  for  indexing,  etc. 
He  was  most  particular  about  the  interpreta- 
tion of  special  words.  In  regard  to  the  word 
Kohelet,  he  wrote,  June  20,  1905: 

Dr.  Adler  had  pointed  out  to  me  that  the  Kohelet 
is  the  same  as  the  Book  of  Ecclesiastes,  and  that 
the  passage  occurs  in  Chapter  I,  verse  18,  of 
which  the  King  James  translation  is:  "He  that 
increaseth  knowledge  increaseth  sorrow."  '  He 
says  that  is  a  good  rendering  of  the  Hebrew. 
My  German  bible  is  quite  different,  embodying 
a  different  idea,  and  so  it  is  in  a  French  bible  I 
have.  Hartman  put  it:  "Wer  die  Kenntniss 
mehrt,  mehrt  das  Weh."  But  I  imagine  he  only 
[56] 


&  personal 

translated  Schopenhauer's  Latin  in  his  own 
way.  In  view  of  all  this  I  am  quite  disposed  to 
give  the  Hebrew  in  my  book  and  comment  on  it 
in  the  bibliography. 

David  Hutcheson,  who  was  working  in  the 
Library  of  Congress  during  one  period  of 
Ward's  life,  has  written  me  a  most  interesting 
letter  regarding  his  acquaintance  with  Dr. 
Ward.  This  letter  reads: 

1221  Monroe  St.,  N.  E., 
BHOOKLAND,  WASHINGTON,  D.  C., 

Sept.  22,  1919. 

MRS.  EMILY  PALMER  CAPE: 
Dear  Mrs.  Cape: 

I  first  met  Lester  Ward  in  the  Library  of  Con- 
gress, where  I  was  then  an  assistant,  and  where 
he  frequently  came  to  consult  books.  I  also 
met  him  at  the  meetings  of  the  Anthropological 
Society  of  Washington,  and  in  the  rooms  of  the 
Cosmos  Club.  And  two  or  three  times  I  was  a 
guest  to  meet  other  friends  in  his  home  in  Rhode 
Island  Avenue.  I  was  also  twice  one  of  a  party  of 
about  a  dozen  including  Ward  and  his  wife,  who 
went  up  the  river  by  canal  boat  and  spent 
Sunday  on  the  Virginia  side  of  the  Great  Falls  of 
the  Potomac.  We  also  met  at  various  places 
[57] 


Hester  Jf . 

and  were  friendly,  but  hardly  on  a  social  basis. 
My  position  in  the  Library  of  Congress  and  his 
need  to  refer  to  books  while  he  was  writing  his 
Dynamic  Sociology  led  to  our  friendly  relations. 
In  a  modest  way  I  had  the  pleasure  of  helping 
him  in  his  researches,  especially  in  the  prepara- 
tion of  the  bibliographical  list  of  authorities 
which  he  printed  at  the  end  of  his  books.  The 
prefaces  of  his  books  show  how  generous  he  was 
in  his  acknowledgments  of  the  slight  services  I 
was  privileged  to  render  him.  I  came  to  have  a 
very  high  regard  for  him.  What  I  saw  of  his 
work  showed  me  how  thorough  it  was.  He  never 
would  quote  at  second  hand,  and  always  verified 
his  authorities.  I  have  known  him  to  spend 
many  hours  seeking  to  find  the  original  source  of 
some  quotation  he  wanted  to  use.  He  had  little 
sense  of  humor,  and  outside  of  his  special  studies, 
his  reading  was  not  extensive.  He  never  how- 
ever pretended  to  have  knowledge  which  he  did 
not  have. 

His  radical  religious  opinions,  and  his  serious 
outlook  on  life  did  not  tend  to  make  him  popu- 
lar; and  I  always  felt  that  he  never  received  the 
recognition  which  he  ought  to  have  had  for  the 
good  work  he  was  doing. 

Up  to  his  going  to  Brown  University,  and  my 

leaving  the  Library  of  Congress,  he  sent  to  me, 

as  they  appeared,  all  his  books  and  pamphlets 

and  articles  in  periodicals.     A  few  weeks  ago 

[58] 


&  -Personal 

having  to  remove  a  portion  of  my  books  from  a 
room  where  I  had  some  of  my  books  shelved,  and 
not  having  any  proper  place  to  put  them,  I  sold 
them  to  Mr.  Loomis  (Lowdermilk  &  Co.)  and 
among  them  were  Ward's  books  and  pamphlets. 
They  were  nearly  all  inscribed  as  gifts  from  him 
to  me.  One  book  I  retained.  From  March, 
1870  to  August  1871  he  edited  The  Iconoclast, 
a  four-page  monthly,  published  in  Washington. 
He  brought  two  complete  copies  to  me  one  day, 
saying  they  were  the  only  copies  left,  and  he 
gave  one  to  the  Library  of  Congress,  and  one  to 
me,  and  this  I  still  have.  His  own  articles  he 
marked  with  a  cross.  They  are  outspoken  and 
vigorous  expositions  of  his  radical  views  on 
religious  and  other  matters. 

I  heard  from  Mr.  Loomis  that  you  were  pre- 
paring a  biography  of  Ward,  and  I  was  glad  to 
know  that  it  was  being  done.  The  life  of  a  man 
who  has  done  such  good  work  ought  not  to  be 
unrecorded. 

Faithfully  yours, 

DAVID  HUTCHESON. 


Mr.  Hutcheson  never  discovered  Lester 
Ward's  "sense  of  humor,"  or  his  "extensive 
reading."  But  those  who  have  heard  him 
tell  deliciously  funny  stories,  or  have  seen  his 

[59] 


Hester  Jf . 

eyes  twinkle  at  the  many  comical  things  one 
sees  in  traveling,  or  his  merry  smiles  as  one 
read  aloud  to  him,  or  have  heard  his  running 
comments,  know  that  he  had  a  spring  of 
humor  that  was  never  dry. 

His  reading  was  in  fact  most  extensive,  but 
not  in  modern  novels  and  the  lighter  litera- 
ture. He  never  read  anything  in  a  transla- 
tion, but  always  waited  for  the  original  text. 
He  could  read  Greek,  Latin,  French,  German, 
Spanish,  Italian  and  Russian,  and  had 
studied  some  of  the  older  Eastern  tongues. 

It  is  true  that  Lester  Ward  did  not  look  for 
popularity.  He  felt  that  he  could  never 
accomplish  the  work  he  had  laid  out  for 
himself,  if  he  allowed  the  social  element  to 
enter  too  largely  into  his  life.  And  yet,  one 
day  while  walking  from  the  University 
(Brown)  down  the  hill  into  the  streets  of 
Providence,  he  pointed  out  an  artistic  old 
house  and  said:  "What  would  I  not  have 
given  to  be  able  to  have  had  all  the  fine 
minds  I  have  known  gather  around  me  in  a 
home  of  my  own." 

[60] 


&  personal 

I  do  not  believe  there  ever  lived  a  soul  that 
practiced  inhibition  more  than  he  did.  He 
had  so  schooled  himself  in  every  line  that 
many  could  not  realize  or  even  imagine  the 
sportive,  genial,  loving,  merry  nature  that 
was  hidden  beneath  the  student-philosopher's 
exterior. 

He  had  will-power  few  could  match,  a 
tenderness  that  was  as  noble  as  a  woman's, 
a  thoughtfulness  of  those  he  truly  loved,  that 
none  could  deny.  He  had  a  sense  of  modesty 
regarding  his  own  mental  power  that  was 
almost  incredible.  He  analyzed  himself  as 
if  he  stood  apart,  and  dissected  his  own  char- 
acter as  if  it  belonged  to  another.  He  was 
conscious  of  having  had  in  youth  little  "  self- 
assertion"  or  rather  perhaps  "self-aggressive- 
ness," and  often  remarked  that  it  was  "a 
difficult  thing  to  conquer  an  inborn  feeling  of 
self -depreciation."  As  above  mentioned,  on 
the  fly  leaf  of  my  Applied  Sociology,  he  wrote: 
"Genius  without  self-respect  is  sterile.  A 
just  estimate  of  one's  powers  is  an  essential 
prerequisite  to  achievement." 
[61] 


Hester  Jf . 

Of  any  man  who  teaches  others  in  groups, 
one  is  likely  to  find  amongst  the  students  a 
certain  general  note  signifying  the  basic 
quality  of  the  man's  character.  If  it  were 
possible  to  print  a  letter  from  each  student 
Dr.  Ward  happened  to  have,  I  believe  there 
would  be  one  harmonious  chorus  sounding 
the  praise  of  the  various  fine  qualities  each 
had  perceived  in  him.  They  speak  among 
themselves  of  his  sincerity,  frankness,  earnest- 
ness, deep  feeling,  keen  analysis,  efficiency, 
interest  in  his  subject,  belief  in  humanity, 
justice  and  orderliness.  Such  are  the  traits 
that  his  students  mention  as  they  discuss 
their  renowned  Professor  of  Sociology. 

Lester  F.  Ward  was  an  honorary  member  of 
the  Rationalist  Press  Association  (R.  P.  A.) 
in  England,  and  its  monthly  review,  The 
Literary  Guide,  he  received  regularly.  He 
always  slipped  a  new  number  into  his  coat 
pocket  to  be  read  at  restaurants  while  waiting 
to  be  served.  He  would  make  a  pencil  mark 
along  the  margins  of  pages  or  paragraphs 
[62] 


that  particularly  attracted  him,  or  make  a 
note  regarding  some  thought  he  might  wish 
to  enlarge  upon,  or  with  which  he  did  not 
quite  agree.  After  finishing  the  reading  of  the 
magazine  he  would  mail  it  to  me,  and  write 
saying:  "This  is  long  overdue,  but  it  takes 
me  some  time  to  read  it  all  through  when  I 
keep  it  for  my  meals  or  in  the  trolleys." 

A  conversation  once  led  to  the  question  of 
what  purity  consisted  in,  and  in  his  quiet, 
simple  way,  he  said  in  effect,  what  he  wrote 
on  the  front  page  of  my  volume,  Pure  Soci- 
ology: "Whatever  is  worth  being  is  worth 
knowing.  True  purity  consists  in  a  complete 
knowledge  of  real  things." 

The  following  incident  is  illustrative  of 
courage  and  tenderness:  I  had  said  to  Dr. 
Ward,  after  we  had  spoken  of  the  Civil  War, 
and  he  had  related  certain  conditions  lived 
through:  "You  have  the  soul  of  an  artist; 
you  both  see  and  feel  beauty."  Then  he  told 
me  this  story:  "On  the  battle  field  during 
heavy  fighting  a  lad  carried  the  Flag  and  as 
he  turned  to  speak  to  me,  a  bullet  from  the 
[63] 


Hester  $.  3Harb 

enemy  felled  the  boy  to  the  earth.  It  was 
so  pitiful,  so  useless,  so  ugly,  I  stopped  and 
covered  the  lad  with  his  beautiful  flag." 
Then,  after  a  moment's  silence  he  continued: 
"I  so  well  remember  standing  a  moment  to 
gaze  upon  him,  forgetting  the  bullets  flying 
so  near  to  me." 

When  in  Washington,  after  Dr.  Ward's 
death,  I  went  one  day  to  look  at  No.  1464 
Rhode  Island  Avenue,  where  he  lived  in  1890. 
A  gentleman  came  down  the  steps  and  crossed 
the  street  to  where  I  stood.  He  halted  a 
moment,  as  if  deciding  which  way  to  turn, 
and  I  spoke  saying:  "I  beg  your  pardon,  but 
did  you  not  come  from  number  1464?" 
"Yes,"  he  replied,  "I  was  calling  there,"  and 
he  naturally  looked  surprised.  I  hastily  told 
him  that  I  had  walked  around  to  gaze  at  the 
old  home  of  my  friend,  Lester  Ward.  The 
gentleman  then  very  kindly  told  me  that  he 
had  been  acquainted  with  Dr.  Ward,  and  had 
heard  him  lecture  at  the  Geographical  So- 
ciety, and  added:  "Ward  was  indeed  a 
[64] 


0  personal 

great  man  and  deeply  admired."  He  also 
gave  me  the  names  of  several  scientific  men 
who  knew  Dr.  Ward  well,  and  my  thanks  are 
thus  doubly  due  to  Mr.  H.  L.  Buell. 

Dr.  F.  V.  Coville  was  good  enough  to  give 
me  an  hour  of  his  time,  at  his  office  in  the 
building  of  the  Department  of  Agriculture. 
He  spoke  with  a  sense  of  kindly  remembrance 
of  the  long  walks  he  had  taken  with  Dr.  Ward 
and  of  their  botanizing  together. 

One  day  while  walking  in  Providence  from 
the  railroad  station,  where  he  always  met  me 
on  my  arrival,  we  stood  a  few  seconds  by  the 
fountain  which  beautifies  the  Plaza  there. 
He  had  received  news  of  the  death  of  a  friend, 
and  that  led  to  the  subject  of  burial.  I 
asked  him  if  he  believed  in  cremation.  His 
reply  was  characteristic:  "Why,  yes,  I 
believe  in  cremation,  as  you  do,  but  after  I 
am  gone  I  do  not  wish  to  impel  others  to 
suffer,  if  they  prefer  any  other  kind  of  burial; 
it  matters  not,  does  it?" 

He  was  buried  at  Glenwood  Cemetery  in 
[65] 


Hester  $ . 

Washington,  but  after  a  short  period  his 
body  was  removed  to  the  Brookside  Ceme- 
tery at  Watertown,  N.  Y.,  to  be  placed  near 
the  second  Mrs.  Ward's  remains. 


[66] 


LETTER  FROM 

DR.  FRANKLIN  H.  GIDDINGS 


[67] 


LESTER  FRANK  WARD  was  one  of  those  excep- 
tional men  who  are  beloved  and  respected  by 
fellow  mortals  who  cannot  altogether  agree  in 
opinion,  and  who,  in  particular,  are  not  of  one 
mind  in  their  reaction  to  the  philosophical 
teachings  of  their  friend. 

Mrs.  Cape  rightly  describes  him  as  childlike 
in  his  attitude  toward  the  world.  There  is, 
however,  more  than  one  kind  of  childlikeness, 
and  Ward's  was  that  of  the  child  who  never  has 
been  frightened  and  who  therefore  meets  the 
world  more  than  half  way,  sincerely  and  frankly. 
Retiring  and  thoughtful,  and  a  little  shy,  he 
nevertheless  had  no  concealments  from  his 
friends,  and  his  revelations  of  himself  to  them 
were  always  those  of  one  who  has  not  so  much 
as  thought  of  caution,  surely  never  has  studied 
it.  Whoever,  then,  reads  these  pages,  is  bound 
to  remember  that  they  were  written  for  Ward's 
friends  in  life  and  for  such  as  are  capable  of 
learning  now  to  care  for  him  by  way  of  acquaint- 
ance through  what  he  wrote  and  did.  It  is  my 
understanding  that  he  expected  Mrs.  Cape  to 
publish  this  material,  and,  indeed,  exacted  her 
promise  to  do  so.  She  has  had  no  choice,  there- 
[69] 


ILt&itt 


fore,   but    to   keep    her    word    and    fulfill    his 
wishes. 

Agreeing  or  disagreeing  with  Ward's  opinion, 
approving  or  disapproving  of  his  teachings,  the 
thousands  of  students  who  have  been  stimulated 
by  him  will  find  here  the  picture  of  a  courageous 
man  who  lived  and  spoke  as  he  thought,  who 
passionately  desired  the  amelioration  of  the  lot 
of  the  masses  of  mankind,  and  whose  kindly 
face  and  gentle  speech  were  the  expressions  of  a 
kindly  soul. 

FRANKLIN  H.  GIDDINGS. 


[70] 


CHAPTER  III 

MY  ONLY  DESIRE  IS  TO  KNOW  THE  TRUTH' 


[71] 


CHAPTER  III 

"MY  ONLY  DESIRE  IS  TO  KNOW  THE  TRUTH*' 

"  My  only  desire  is  to  know  the  truth,  my  only  fear  to 
cling  to  error." — George  Eliot. 

BORN  in  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century  it  is  almost  incredible  that  the  ideas 
and  thoughts  of  Lester  Ward  were  originated, 
developed,  and  published  when  the  majority 
of  people  had  never  even  dreamed  of  such 
things.  Those  who  follow  the  evolution  of 
his  mind,  as  presented  in  Glimpses  of  the 
Cosmos,  his  "mental  biography,"  as  I  called 
it,  find  a  special  significance  in  the  produc- 
tions of  his  early  manhood,  the  vigorous 
articles  in  the  Iconoclast.  These  are  chiefly 
an  attack  on  the  dogmatic  teachings  of 
theology.  In  them  he  endeavors  to  destroy 
by  sarcasm  and  witty  denunciation  the  un- 
scientific beliefs  of  orthodoxy.  Thus  he 
[73] 


Hester  Jf .  Harb 

showed  early  in  life  both  progressiveness  and 
courage. 

When  those  Iconoclast  articles  were  written 
Ward  faced  a  very  different  public  from  that 
of  to-day.  The  later  discoveries  of  geology 
and  chemistry,  of  physics  and  astronomy  and 
biology,  were  known  to  but  few.  Ward  knew 
them  and  his  great  love  of  truth  impelled 
him  to  give  them  to  others,  although  he  saw 
that  the  new  knowledge  would  change  their 
entire  outlook  on  life. 

Ward  belonged  to  the  same  type  of  man  as 
Huxley,  Spencer,  and  Comte.  He  had  broad 
views  and  a  natural  sense  of  proportion.  His 
vision  was  cosmic.  He  viewed  creation  as  a 
whole,  with  no  beginning,  no  end,  forever  an 
eternal  change,  evolution  under  Law.  There 
are  no  gaps.  He  believed,  for  instance,  in  the 
biological  origin  of  mind,  and  that  the  origin 
of  intellect  presented  no  mystery.  "In- 
tellect," he  said,  "is  primarily  an  advan- 
tageous faculty  and  came  into  existence 
through  the  action  of  natural  selection  or  the 
survival  of  the  fittest  in  the  struggle  for 
[74] 


&  Personal 

existence.  If  so  it  is  of  biologic  origin." 
(Pure  Sociology,  p.  475.)  He  never  discusses 
the  question  of  a  God.  To  him,  as  to  Laplace, 
the  God  hypothesis  was  unnecessary.  The 
laws  of  nature  have  always  existed;  they  were 
not  made  to  order.  I  believe  the  only  time 
he  uses  the  word  God  in  his  writings  is  in 
Pure  Sociology  on  page  136,  and  here  it  is 
used  only  as  the  great  utterance  of  the  Cos- 
mic urge: 

Nature  [he  says]  is  not  only  a  becoming,  it  is 
a  striving.  The  universal  energy  never  ceases  to 
act  and  its  ceaseless  activity  constantly  creates. 
The  quantity  of  matter,  mass,  and  motion  in  the 
universe  is  unchangeable,  everything  else  changes 
— position,  direction,  velocity,  path,  combina- 
tion, form.  To  say  with  Schopenhauer  that 
matter  is  causality  involves  an  ellipsis.  It  is 
not  matter,  but  collision  that  constitutes  the  only 
cause.  This  eternal  pelting  of  atoms,  this  driv- 
ing of  the  elements,  this  pressure  at  every  point, 
this  struggle  of  all  created  things,  this  universal 
nisus  of  nature  pushing  into  existence  all  ma- 
terial forms  and  storing  itself  up  in  them  as  pro- 
perties, as  life,  as  feeling,  as  thought,  this  is  the 
hylozoism  of  the  philosophers,  the  self-activity 
of  Hegel,  the  will  of  Schopenhauer,  the  atom- 
[75] 


Eestfer  Jf . 

soul  of  Haeckel;  it  is  the  soul  of  the  universe,  the 
spirit  of  Nature,  the  "First  Cause"  of  both 
religion  and  science — it  is  God. 

And  yet,  as  I  have  shown,  he  was  not 
irreligious.  His  thoughts  on  religion  were  not 
as  many  have  supposed  they  would  have 
been.  He  never  spoke  of  religion  in  a  scornful 
or  jesting  manner.  He  had  indeed  a  very 
religious  and  poetic  mind,  believing  in  the 
great  sense  of  feeling  that  men  must  forever 
be  fed  by  the  beauty  and  aspiring  attitude 
which  religion  ought  to  inspire.  On  page 
429  in  Pure  Sociology,  he  says:  "A  true, 
rational,  and  consistent  love  of  animals  and 
man,  because  they  are  all  feeling  creatures,  is 
a  noble  impulse  and  marks  the  highest  point 
in  purely  ethical  development. 

"  Here  we  should  probably  stop,  but  there  is 
another  step  that  seems  to  be  in  the  same 
direction,  although  it  transcends  the  bounds 
of  the  ethical  world  and  hence  can  scarcely 
be  called  a  form  of  altruism.  I  refer  to  the 
love  of  nature.  It  is  not  love  in  the  sense  of 
possible  sympathy  or  of  any  conceivable 
[76] 


&  personal 

benefit  that  can  be  done,  and  yet  it  still  is 
love.  It  is  the  connecting  link  between  the 
moral  and  the  aesthetic,  and  yet  it  is  not 
wholly  a  sense  of  pleasure  in  the  contempla- 
tion of  the  beautiful  or  the  sublime.  It  is 
perhaps  rather  a  religious  sentiment,  and  is 
probably  the  last  and  final  stopping  place  of 
religion.  .  .  .  For  nature  is  infinite,  and  the 
serious  contemplation  of  nature  brings  the 
mind  into  relations  with  the  infinite." 

His  desire  was  that  orthodoxy  and  un- 
scientific teachings  should  be  blotted  out 
through  education  and  in  its  place  be  given 
the  true  knowledge  of  the  materials  and 
forces  of  nature. 

His  was  a  nature  completely  emancipated, 
and  one  may  seek  over  the  face  of  the  earth 
or  through  history  and  find  but  few  who  so 
thoroughly  had  evolved  into  a  free  man. 

Ward's  emphasis  of  the  feelings,  then,  as 
the  great  dynamic  agent,  and  his  classifica- 
tion of  the  social  forces  have  a  subjective 
basis.  He  found  all  these  forces  in  his  own 
nature,  and  whenever  he  could  give  free  play 
[77] 


Hester  $ .  QKIarb 

to  that  wondrous  nature,  nobly,  beautifully, 
aesthetically,  he  did  so,  and  rejoiced  in  the 
possession  of  those  psychic  civilizing  agencies 
that  he  knew  to  be  so  intense  and  real. 

Ward  was  one  of  the  first  to  give  to  the 
world  true  views  with  respect  to  woman. 
This  he  did  in  the  fourteenth  chapter  of  Pure 
Sociology.  This  chapter  brought  him  more 
amusement,  from  curious  questions,  expres- 
sions of  appreciation  bordering  on  the  senti- 
mental, etc.,  than  anything  else  he  ever 
wrote.  Women  wanted  to  meet  him  to 
express  their  admiration,  I  might  almost  say, 
adoration.  He  found  it  difficult  to  respond 
to  some  of  the  letters  he  received  without 
hurting  the  feelings  of  the  writers.  Long 
poems,  verses,  and  sometimes  gifts  of  a  sen- 
timental character  were  sent  to  him,  but 
seldom  was  there  among  his  correspondents 
one  who  really  seemed  to  grasp  the  true 
significance  of  that  Chapter. 

Ward  believed  in  the  future  development 
of  what  he  called  gynandrocratic  society,  a 
state  in  which  both  men  and  women  will  be 
[78] 


3  personal 

free  to  rule  themselves.  But  he  never  at- 
tempted to  prophesy  the  exact  conditions  or 
occurrences  of  the  future.  He  knew  that  the 
understanding  of  a  law  or  principle  does  not 
enable  one  to  delineate  the  circumstances 
and  adjustments  of  its  future  operations. 

In  discussing  women  writers  one  day,  the 
name  of  George  Eliot  was  mentioned,  and  it 
was  with  keenest  interest  and  sincerity  that 
Dr.  Ward  spoke  of  her  as  a  woman  he  should 
like  to  have  known  and  then  he  quoted  the 
words  of  George  Eliot  he  admired  and  used 
so  often:  "There  is  a  life  apart  from  circum- 
stantial things." 

Some  of  his  students  expressed  disappoint- 
ment because  he  did  not  give  them  a  cut  and 
dried  formula  for  making  the  world  over,  and 
a  detailed  description  of  what  it  is  to  become. 
But  he  would  tell  them  that  one  may  know 
beforehand  the  chemical  elements  of  a  com- 
bination, or  the  individual  factors  in  certain 
crossing-of-strains  hi  vegetable  or  animal  life, 
and  yet  not  be  able  to  predict  the  properties 
and  forces  that  would  result  from  combining 
[79] 


Jf .  Qfcrb 

or  crossing,  or  the  relation  the  new  product 
would  sustain  to  other  compounds  or  or- 
ganisms. So  it  is  with  society. 

His  ideas  in  regard  to  the  sexes  and  what 
is  known  as  "natural  love,"  discussed  in  a 
purely  scientific  spirit  in  his  Pure  Sociology, 
startled  many,  and  were  denied,  even  con- 
demned by  that  type  of  person  who,  besides 
being  unscientific,  looks  upon  all  discussion  of 
sexual  relations  as  sensual.  Such  persons 
cannot  understand  the  sincerely  spiritual,  the 
beautiful,  pure  and  good  attitude  he  always 
took  in  contemplating  the  laws  of  life.  To 
him,  science  taught  even  the  spirituality  of 
matter. 

Ward  believed  that  in  time  the  world, 
instead  of  being  ashamed  to  speak  of  sex,  or 
keeping  youth  ignorant  of  its  marvelous 
laws,  would  come  to  understand  these  laws, 
and  teach  them  to  the  young,  perceiving  that 
"the  great  life-tonic  of  the  world,  the  sub- 
limest  and  most  exalted  as  well  as  the  purest 
and  noblest  of  impulses"  is  infinitely  im- 
portant in  its  influence  upon  the  soul 
[80] 


&  personal 

life,  that  its  effects  are  spiritual,  and  race- 
making. 

The  purity  and  nobility  of  natural  love  [he  says] 
have  been  perceived  by  all  great  minds,  [that] 
such  a  tremendous  power  in  society  should  re- 
quire regulation  .  .  .  but  what  are  all  marriage 
systems  but  modes  of  regulating  this  power? 
.  .  .  but  (it)  cannot,  any  more  than  any  other 
natural  force,  be  destroyed  or  suppressed.  It 
can  only  be  directed.  But  it  may  be  wrongly 
as  well  as  rightly  directed.  It  may  be  made  to 
flow  in  dangerous  as  well  as  in  safe  channels. 

The  distinctive  significance  of  Ward's 
teaching  is  to  recognize  the  psychic  factor  in 
human  society.  He  found  a  place  in  his 
sociology  for  all  the  higher  spiritual  values 
of  civilization.  Religion  was  a  "force  of 
social  gravitation  which  holds  the  world  in 
its  orbit."  His  aim  was  always  for  truth. 
He  believed  in  the  utility  of  the  knowledge  of 
the  facts  of  nature.  He  says: 

It  has  been  proved  that  crime  may  be  prevented 
by  broadening  the  mind  of  the  criminal  with 
knowledge  that  he  can  never  make  any  direct  use 

[81] 


Hester  $ . 

of,  and  I  have  myself  maintained,  and  still  be- 
lieve, that  astronomy  is  a  more  practical  subject 
than  ethics  to  teach  to  the  criminal  class.  [Again 
he  says:]  Truth  is  rightly  conceived  as  always 
possessing  at  least  a  potential  utility  and,  there- 
fore, as  always  worthy  of  investigation. 

Some  one  suggested  to  him  at  one  time 
that  the  principles  underlying  his  Dynamic 
Sociology,  or  the  great  elaboration  of  his 
social  forces  were  too  simple  to  revolutionize, 
were  little  more  than  truisms.  He  replied: 
"Such  fertile  principles  lie  at  the  foundation 
of  social  science.  Their  simplicity  is  like 
nearly  all  important  truths,  easy  to  under- 
stand." 

A  few  paragraphs  from  the  close  of  Chapter 
VI  in  his  Applied  Sociology  show  the  high 
minded  and  positive  feeling  he  had  toward 
Truth: 

Mr.  Robert  G.  Ingersoll,  when  asked  if  he  could 
suggest  any  way  by  which,  if  he  had  the  power, 
he  could  improve  the  universe,  replied  that  he 
would  first  make  health  catching  instead  of  dis- 
ease. All  this  error  of  which  we  have  been 
speaking  may  be  looked  upon  as  so  much  social 
[82] 


&fcctctj 

disease,  which,  under  the  laws  of  imitation  so 
ably  worked  out  by  M.  Tarde,  is  contagious,  and 
is  passed  on  from  mind  to  mind  and  from  age  to 
age.  And  just  as  the  mission  of  medical  science 
is  to  do  away  with  disease  and  replace  it  by 
health,  so  the  mission  of  social  science  is  to  do 
away  with  error  and  replace  it  by  truth.  It  may 
be  said  that  this  is  the  mission  of  all  science,  and 
so  it  is.  But  all  the  science  in  the  world  has 
failed  to  remove  any  of  the  great  world  errors. 
They  still  stand  in  the  face  of  it  and  are  shared 
by  the  mass  of  mankind.  The  false  ideas  have, 
indeed,  been  disproved,  and  the  true  explana- 
tions of  natural  phenomena  have  been  furnished, 
but  all  this  has  little  social  value.  The  number 
who  know  the  truth  is  relatively  insignificant 
even  in  the  most  enlightened  countries.  The 
business  world  takes  up  the  scientific  discoveries 
and  utilizes  them,  and  the  mass  avail  themselves 
of  the  resultant  advantages,  but  they  have  no  idea 
of  the  true  significance  of  scientific  discovery. 
The  great  bulk  of  every  population  on  the  globe 
is  steeped  in  error.  A  wholly  emancipated  per- 
son finds  himself  almost  completely  alone  in  the 
world.  There  is  not  one  perhaps  in  a  whole  city 
in  which  he*  lives  with  whom  he  can  converse 
five  minutes,  because  the  moment  any  one  begins 
to  talk  he  reveals  the  fact  that  his  mind  is  a 
bundle  of  errors,  of  false  conceits,  of  supersti- 
tions, and  of  prejudices  that  render  him  utterly 
[83] 


Jf , 

uninteresting.  The  great  majority  are  running 
off  after  some  popular  fad.  Of  course  the  most 
have  already  abrogated  their  reasoning  powers 
entirely  by  accepting  some  creed.  The  few  that 
have  begun  to  doubt  their  creed  are  looking  for 
another.  They  may  think  they  are  progressing, 
but  their  credulity  is  as  complete  as  ever,  and 
they  are  utterly  devoid  of  any  knowledge  by 
which  to  test  the  credibility  of  their  beliefs.  And 
yet  these  may  be  what  pass  for  "educated" 
persons,  for,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  education 
that  is  afforded  by  the  systems  of  the  world  not 
only  does  not  furnish  any  knowledge  but  ex- 
pressly disclaims  doing  this,  and  aims  only  to 
"draw  out"  some  supposed  inherent  powers  or 
talents.  But,  as  we  have  already  seen,  these 
native  powers,  deprived  of  all  the  materials 
upon  which  to  exert  themselves,  are  not  merely 
useless  but  are  in  a  high  degree  dangerous  and 
pernicious.  Ignorance  is  comparatively  safe. 
It  is  error  that  does  the  mischief,  and  the  stronger 
the  reasoning  faculties  working  upon  meager 
materials  the  more  misleading  and  disastrous 
the  erroneous  conclusions  thus  drawn  are  for 
mankind. 

Of  course  the  great  desideratum  is  to  supply 
the  data  for  thinking,  and  to  supply  them  to  all 
mankind  and  not  merely  to  a  handful  of  the 
elite,  but  the  problem  is  how  to  do  this.  Truth 
is  unattractive.  Error  charms.  It  holds  out  all 
[84] 


3  personal  g>kclrf) 

manner  of  false  hopes.  It  is  a  siren  song  that 
lures  frail  mariners  upon  desert  isles,  where  with 
nothing  to  nourish  the  soul  they  perish  and  leave 
their  bones  to  bleach  upon  the  barren  sand.  All 
the  shores  of  the  great  ocean  of  time  are  strewn 
with  these  whitened  skeletons  of  misguided 
thought.  Truth  furnishes  the  only  real  hope. 
It  is  truth  that  should  be  made  attractive,  allur- 
ing, contagious,  to  such  a  degree  that  it  shall 
penetrate  the  whole  mass  of  mankind,  crowding 
out  and  replacing  the  error  that  now  fills  the 
world. 

It  is  recognized  by  all  who  accept  the  ideologi- 
cal interpretation  of  history,  which,  as  we  have 
seen,  does  not  conflict  with  the  economic  inter- 
pretation, that  world  ideas  are  what  determine 
and  control  human  action;  that  action  therefore 
depends  upon  the  nature  of  these  ideas.  The 
principal  quality  of  ideas  as  affecting  action  is 
the  relative  amount  of  truth  and  error  that  they 
embody.  As  we  have  seen,  early  ideas  consist 
chiefly  of  error,  and  we  have  enumerated  some 
of  the  consequences  of  this  error.  All  progress  in 
ideas  has  consisted  in  the  gradual  elimination  of 
the  error  and  substitution  of  truth.  The  several 
steps  in  religious  ideas,  from  fetishism  to  mono- 
theism, have  been  in  this  direction.  All  heresies 
have  been  attempts  to  get  rid  of  some  small  part 
of  the  error  of  the  orthodox  type  of  beliefs.  The 
Protestant  Reformation  was  another  such  a  step. 
[85] 


Heater  Jf . 

The  deism  of  Voltaire  and  Thomas  Paine  was 
still  another.  Although  these  steps  may  seem 
small  to  the  fully  emancipated,  still  they  repre- 
sent progress.  It  is  characteristic  of  the  human 
mind  to  take  short  steps.  Few  are  capable  of 
throwing  off  all  error  at  once  as  a  snake  casts  its 
skin.  A  part  must  be  clung  to  and  cherished 
a  while  longer.  In  this  respect,  speaking  gener- 
ally, the  peoples  of  the  north  of  Europe  differ 
from  those  of  the  south.  The  former  are  satisfied 
with  the  surrender  of  a  part,  while  the  latter 
cling  to  the  whole  until  they  can  hold  it  no  longer 
and  pass  by  a  single  leap  from  complete  ortho- 
doxy to  complete  freedom  of  religious  thought. 
This  is  the  true  reason  why  the  Reformation 
never  could  gain  a  foothold  among  the  Latin 
races,  and  not,  as  some  suppose,  because  the 
latter  are  naturally  more  superstitious.  There 
are  many  liberal  minds  among  the  Latin  races, 
but  there  are  few  Protestants. 

Error  believed  with  sufficient  force  to  deter- 
mine action  is  retrogessive  in  its  effects.  The 
progressive  character  of  any  age  depends  upon 
the  amount  of  truth  embodied  in  its  philosophy, 
i.e.,  in  its  world  views.  The  natural  tendency  of 
truth  is  to  cause  progressive  action.  In  other 
words,  the  dynamic  quality  of  human  ideas  is 
strictly  proportional  to  the  degree  to  which  they 
harmonize  with  objective  reality.  It  follows 
that  all  the  progress  that  has  taken  place  in  the 
[86] 


world  as  the  result  of  human  thought  has  been 
due  to  the  truth  that  has  been  brought  to  light. 
This  accounts  for  the  relatively  small  amount  of 
human  progress  that  is  due  to  this  cause.  The 
greater  part,  as  shown  in  Pure  Sociology,  Chap- 
ter XI,  has  been  of  the  purely  unconscious, 
genetic  sort,  with  which  ideas  have  nothing  to 
do.  But  most  of  the  progress  due  to  ideas  is  of 
that  superficial  kind  which  merely  produces 
material  civilization  through  the  conquest  of 
nature,  and  does  not  penetrate  to  the  lower 
strata  of  society  at  all.  This  is  because  the  truth 
is  possessed  by  only  a  minute  fraction  of  society. 
It  therefore  has  great  economic  value  but  very 
little  social  value.  What  the  progress  of  the 
world  would  be  if  all  this  truth  were  socially 
appropriated  no  one  can  foresee,  but  its  effect 
would  probably  be  proportional  to  the  number 
possessing  it. 

As  great  truths  are  simple  so  was  his  great 
nature.  He  was  like  a  child  in  his  delight  in 
simple  amusements;  more  than  modest  when 
in  the  company  of  those  who  knew  less  than 
he;  kindly  in  teaching  and  ready  to  admire 
anything  worthy  said  or  done  by  another;  so 
unassuming  and  unpretentious  that  a  stranger 
would  never  know  the  giant-intellect  they 
[87] 


Hester  Jf . 

were  in  the  presence  of  unless  something 
happened  to  call  it  out;  few  ever  guessed  the 
tremendous  passion  and  feeling  that  was 
hidden  beneath  his  calm  and  silent  exterior. 
World  renowned  as  he  is  to-day  among 
thinkers,  the  time  will  come,  I  think,  when 
the  mass  of  people  of  the  earth  will  know 
him  and  speak  with  keen  and  sincere  ad- 
miration of  the  man  whose  great  desire  was 
to  give  his  strength  and  knowledge  to  making 
life  happier  for  all  humanity. 

As  a  philosopher  he  did  not  believe  in 
personal  immortality,  but  often  spoke  of  the 
" immortality  of  deeds,"  and  would  say: 
"The  real  immortality  is  the  immortality  of 
achievement." 


[88] 


CHAPTER  IV 

PARAGRAPHS  FROM  UNPUBLISHED  PAGES 


[89] 


CHAPTER  IV 

PAKAGRAPHS   FROM   UNPUBLISHED    PAGES 

DEAN  VEDITZ,  of  the  George  Washington 
University,  wrote  the  following  words  for  the 
Washington  papers  after  the  death  of  Lester 
F.  Ward: 

His  death  marks  the  disappearance  of  a 
scientist  who  will  unquestionably  rank  as  one 
of  the  half  dozen  greatest  thinkers  in  his  field 
that  the  world  has  produced. 

His  work  and  power  as  a  thinker  are  so 
well  known  or  at  least  so  well  revealed  in  his 
books,  that  I  need  not  endeavor  so  much  to 
present  this  side  of  his  character  as  to  give 
the  less  well-known  emotional  or  feeling  side 
which  he  showed  only  to  the  few. 

In  no  way  could  I  bring  closer  to  the  minds 
who  now,  or  in  the  future,  may  feel  akin  to 
[91] 


Hester  Jf . 

this  great  man,  than  to  give  paragraphs  from 
his  letters  in  which  he  wrote  of  his  personal 
feelings  and  thoughts.  His  letters  show  keen 
and  tender  feelings  on  many  subjects. 

The  idea  of  Emancipation  was  one  to  which 
he  often  returned.  In  his  hundreds  of  letters 
it  was  discussed  from  many  points  of  view. 
In  a  letter  of  "January  9th,  9  P.M.  1910," 
he  writes: 

I  claim  to  be  emancipated  wholly  above  and 
independent  of  the  conventional  restraint  that 
enslaves  other  men  almost  as  completely  as  it 
does  the  savage. 

On  Inhibition  he  wrote : 

June  6-1910:  That  is  a  quality  I  have  always 
cultivated  in  myself.  To  it  I  attribute  most  of 
my  success  (I  mean  quantity  of  work).  I  teach 
that  genius  consists  of  intellect  plus  character. 
Character  is  made  up  of  all  the  moral  qualities, 
and  inhibition  is  the  one  perhaps  most  essential 
to  genius.  Only  pathologic  genius  (prodigies) 
can  do  things  by  spurts. 

On  the  question  of  sex  he  was  honest  and 
sincere  in  his  expressions  of  contempt  for 

[92] 


"mere   animal   existence":     In   a  letter  of 
June  9,  1910,  he  says: 

I  have  a  profound  contempt  for  that  life  of  mere 
animal  existence  which  does  not  reflect  on  the 
glories  of  love,  but  takes  them  as  simple  passing 
waves  to  be  satisfied  if  possible  and  gotten  rid  of 
as  early  as  possible  as  something  rather  bad  in 
themselves.  It  is  part  of  that  slavery  to  func- 
tion which  belongs  to  a  pain  economy.  I  some- 
times have  this  thought  come  over  me,  hard  to 
express,  but  great :  I  imagine  that  there  was  not 
and  never  had  been  any  taboos  on  love  or  sex, 
or  the  body  or  the  great  organs  of  reproduction, 
and  that  all  the  feelings  from  that  source  were 
looked  upon  the  same  as  those  from  sight  or 
sound  (art,  music),  over  which  cultivated  people 
so  rave,  although  they  do  not  yield  a  tithe  of  the 
joy  that  comes  from  love.  Imagine  the  whole 
enlightened,  cultivated,  reflecting,  thinking 
world  thus  freed  from  this  incubus  of  the  sex 
taboo,  what  a  glorious  thing  this  great  source  of 
joy  would  be!  .  .  .  (one)  emancipated  from 
the  slavery  to  function  can  look  upon  life  (the 
"phylogenetic  forces")  as  we  look  upon  art,  duty, 
thought  (the  "  sociogenetic  forces")  as  not  only 
"life  mitigating"  forces  or  "forces  of  race  eleva- 
tion" (Outlines,  155),  but  as  truly  aesthetic  forces 
and  the  most  effective  of  all  sources  of  happiness. 
[93] 


Hester  Jf . 
In  the  same  letter  he  speaks  thus  of  flowers : 

I  love  peonies  when  they  are  not  too  much 
doubled  up.  I  hate  "  double"  flowers.  They  are 
not  natural.  The  sexual  organs  are  destroyed. 
The  stamens  and  pistils  are  converted  into  petals, 
that  is,  the  sexual  organs  are  converted  into  pro- 
tective organs  with  nothing  to  protect.  They 
are  monstrosities,  not  of  nature,  but  of  human 
art.  They  are  deformities.  I  love  the  little  wild 
roses  better  than  all  the  Marshal  Niels  and 
Jacqueminots. 

He  spoke  one  day  about  the  beauty  of 
minds  sharing  harmonious  thoughts  and 
ideas,  and,  writing  about  it  a  little  later,  he 
mentioned  how  ideas  sometimes  affected  him 
while  speaking  in  public:  "I  think  I  have 
mentioned  to  you  how  greatideas  affect  me. 
'Affect'  in  two  senses.  Sometimes,  I  nearly 
break  down  under  the  power  of  a  great  idea." 
(Aug.,  1910.) 

Once  in  a  letter  to  him  I  spoke  of  "statical 
work."  He  replied: 

How  interestingly  you  wrote  about  "static 
work!"  How  much  I  think  of  that!  It  belongs 

[94] 


8  personal  g>Uctclj 

to  mediocre  people,  but  superior  people  so  often 
do  little  else.  Dynamic  work  never  earns  money 
(or  rarely).  I  have  had  to  do  so  much  statical 
work  to  live.  And  how  appropriate  to  mention 
George  Eliot  in  that  connection !  It  was  she  who 
spoke  of  "a  life  apart  from  circumstantial 
things." 

In  expressing  the  intense  joy  he  felt  in 
having  a  friend  who  saw  life  exactly  as  he 
did,  he  wrote  (Sept.  7,  1910): 

Ah!  the  "palatial  halls."  They  are  the  great 
thoughts,  the  "between  the  lines,"  the  esoteric 
philosophy.  Life  in  the  empyrean.  Mind 
threads,  esthetic  glories  undreamed  of  by 
artists, — thought  and  love. 

A  poem  written  at  "Trinity  Lake,"  near 
Stamford,  Conn.,  and  sent  to  him,  called 
Song  of  the  Woods  brought  forth  this  response : 

Sept.  27, 1910 :  You  do  love  poor  old  humanity. 
I  do  too,  but  only  on  account  of  its  possibilities. 
In  its  present  state  it  is  altogether  unlovely,  but 
like  you,  I  look  a  millennium  ahead.  How  many 
have  done  that!  Think  of  Condorcet  and  his 
faith  in  the  future!  But  like  all  the  rest,  he  put 
it  too  early.  I  say  a  millennium.  Better  say  ten 
[95] 


millenniums.  All  the  races  of  men  must  first  be 
blended  into  one  race.  The  whole  planet  must 
be  under  one  vast  administration.  All  the 
superstitions  (religions)  must  have  disappeared. 
All  mankind  must  be  in  possession  of  all  knowl- 
edge. Only  think  how  long  all  that  will  take! 
But  not  so  long  as  it  took  to  develop  the  horse. 
Not  so  long  as  it  has  taken  to  make  man  what 
he  is  from  a  Pithecanthropus,  a  Neanderthal 
man,  or  perhaps  even  a  Robenhausen  man. 
The  possibilities  of  evolution  are  so  immense, 
as  Mrs.  Stetson  (Gilman's)  poem  so  beautifully 
shows. 

And  again  on  Sept.  29th: 

What  a  number  of  kinds  of  things  I  have  done 
in  my  life!  How  many  different  r6les  I  have  had 
to  play!  It  has  truly  been  a  "checkered"  life. 
About  poor  old,  or  rather  young,  infantile 
humanity:  we  who  are  of  age,  mature,  out  of 
swaddling  clothes,  we  need  not  think  we  must  wait 
all  that  enormous  period  that  it  is  going  to  take 
for  the  world  to  get  its  growth. 

He  enthused  over  great  friendships  and 
felt  the  necessity  of  having  thoughts  together. 
He  once  wrote: 

[96] 


&  Personal 

Sept.  30, 1910:  I  guess  I  am  glad  you  can  think. 
If  you  had  not  been  a  thinker  you  would  not 
have  cared  for  me.  After  all  that  is  the  great 
bond  that  binds  us  together,  the  intellectual 
world  we  live  together  in. 

Writing  October  3,  1910,  of  the  name 
chosen  for  the  great  volumes  which  were  his 
last  work,  and  which  we  worked  on  for  three 
years  steadily,  he  says: 

The  name  Glimpses  of  the  Cosmos  occurred  to 
me  years  ago,  and  I  have  an  old  slip  with  the 
name  on  it,  but  no  date.  I  do  not  think  I  wrote 
the  name  for  a  year  or  two  after  I  decided  upon 
it,  for  it  was  in  my  mind  so  long.  Many  things 
in  my  biography  are  of  that  kind,  long  unwritten, 
I  suppose  I  may  be  a  genius  in  a  sense;  so  much 
subconscious  work.  I  explain  it  as  the  result  of 
stocked  (perhaps  overstocked)  mind.  I  have  ac- 
quired so  much  knowledge  by  eternally  digging 
at  things,  that  it  is  a  kind  of  ferment  in  my  brain, 
and  is  constantly  cropping  out  in  one  shape  or 
another.  But  .  .  .  there  is  a  quality  that  I 
prize  more  than  this  kind  of  acquired  genius,  and 
that  is  my  affective  nature.  I  am  so  affectionate 
in  my  nature,  a  quality  that  has  cost  me  nothing, 
that  I  was  born  with.  I  love  so  intensely.  I 
am  like  a  woman.  And  just  as  I  have  the  emo- 
7  [97] 


Jf . 

tional  side  highly  developed  for  a  man,  so  you 
have  the  intellectual  side  highly  developed  for  a 
woman.  That  is  what  makes  us  so  companion- 
able. 

Later  he  writes: 

I  attribute  the  warmth  of  my  ideas  to  that 
highly  emotional  nature  of  mine.  I  can  scarcely 
utter  a  great  truth  without  choking  with  emotion. 
Am  I  bragging?  I  have  already  said  that  the 
emotional  side  is  natural,  not  acquired  like  the 
other,  and  therefore  I  am  entitled  to  no  credit  for 
possessing  it.  Still  I  have  always  maintained 
that  intellectual  development  is  a  condition  to 
true  emotional  development.  Without  it  the 
latter  is  narrow,  subjective,  inconsistent,  and 
inseparable  from  egotistic  interests. 

Speaking  of  the  emotional  nature,  I  may 
say  that  it  was  a  joy  to  him  to  think  he 
started  Glimpses  of  the  Cosmos  ("our  book" 
he  always  called  it)  on  my  birthday,  October 
6th.  He  seemed  to  weave  a  poetical  and 
charming  delight  into  the  connection  of  my 
birth  celebration  with  the  birth,  so  to  speak, 
of  his  beloved  volumes. 

He  said  that  few  ever  seemed  able  to  reach 
[98] 


down  far  enough  to  find  the  emotional  side 
of  his  nature.  Those  who  had  come  nearer 
to  him  than  others  in  general  were  not  many, 
but  each  one  of  these  had  lacked  some  quality 
which  he  had  hoped  to  discover.  Thus  he 
worked  deeper  and  deeper  into  his  intellectual 
work.  Even  in  his  family,  he  once  said,  they 
call  me  "Mr.  Ward."  It  is  only  Dr.  Ross 
who  says  "Uncle  Lester!"  Although  he  felt 
the  lack  of  philosophical  comprehension,  in 
the  very  midst  of  his  life,  yet  he  never  spoke 
of  it  unkindly.  He  had  lived  so  much  alone, 
emotionally,  that  it  was  natural  for  him  to 
"gloriously  live"  when  he  was  able  to  pour 
out  without  fear  the  expression  of  his  great 
soul. 

Once,  when  walking  along  the  beautiful 
Lake  Mendota,  at  Madison,  Wis.,  after 
delivering  one  of  his  fine  Sociological  lectures, 
I  saw  tears  in  his  eyes,  and  I  remarked  how 
deeply  I  had  been  impressed  by  the  last  part 
of  his  discourse.  It  was  almost  as  if  the  whole 
class  had  responded  to  his  solemn  and  sub- 
lime climax.  Then  he  took  my  hand  quietly 
[99] 


tester  Jf . 

and  said:  "I  could  have  gone  on  for  another 
hour,  so  filled  with  power  was  I,  and  I  thrilled 
at  the  very  thoughts  which  came  rushing 
tome!" 

His  whole  nature  was  filled  with  a  certain 
childlikeness  that  was  delicious.  One  de- 
lightful little  incident  bespeaks  it:  when  we 
corresponded  we  always  used  both  sides  of 
the  paper  until  later  we  decided  to  use  but 
one  so  as  to  preserve  special  sentences.  In 
the  months  we  wrote  on  either  side  he  found 
one  day  that  I  had  by  mistake  slipped  over 
one  side  of  a  sheet.  He  wrote  me  to  be  more 
careful,  for  he  felt  he  had  been  cheated  out  of 
just  a  page!  Another  time  when  he  made  a 
similar  error  he  scribbled  on  the  back  of  the 
page:  "I  didn't  mean  to  leave  this  page 
blank.  It  was  a  mistake.  Pardon.  A  queen 
can  pardon  a  king." 

Once  when  we  were  taking  a  long  walk  in 
the  outskirts  of  Providence,  R.  I.,  he  turned 
to  me  and  said: 

How  did  you  ever  dare  to  touch  my  emotional 

nature?    How  did  you  ever  know  I  am  what  I 

[100] 


&  Personal 

am?  Because  I  met  you  as  I  do  all  others,  cool 
and  philosophical,  calm  and  undemonstrable. 
No  one  seeing  me  pass  on  the  street  would  imag- 
ine the  volume  of  fire  you  knew  from  the  first 
was  in  my  soul! 

Feeling  was  behind  all  he  wrote.  As  I 
have  said,  he  never  wrote  anything  "to 
order."  He  wrote  me  on  Oct.  5,  1910: 

I  have  never  written  anything  to  order.  The 
moment  that  element  comes  in  I  am  powerless. 
All  that  I  have  ever  written  has  come  from 
within  outward. 

And,  again,  he  said,  Oct.  6,  1910: 

It  is  a  question  after  all  of  how  to  get  the  maximum 
pleasure  out  of  life.  You  hardly  know  the  satis- 
faction of  working  for  an  end  that  you  can  see  in 
the  future,  I  have  always  seen  the  volumes  of 
my  books  on  the  shelves  before  they  were 
written.  I  see  those  of  the  Glimpses  now.  It  is 
a  joy.  "The  instinct  of  Workmanship"  (Veb- 
len).  How  that  phrase  did  please  me !  I  love  to 
work.  It  has  been  the  chief  source  of  all  my 
happiness  in  life.  It  yields  the  intellectual 
pleasure  as  domestic  life  does  the  emotional. 

On  "October  7,  1910,  Friday  morning," 
the  day  after  my  birthday,  he  had  been 

[1011 


Jf .  ilHarb 

looking  into  his  diary  of  the  year  1865,  and 
he  mentions  his  first  wife  Lizzie,  of  whose 
charming  traits  he  had  told  me,  so  tender  and 
sweet,  and  whose  youthful  enthusiasm  and 
earnest  interest  in  his  work  drew  them  so 
closely  together;  he  quotes: 

I  have  looked  up  my  diary  [he  writes]  and  see 
what  I  did  on  Oct.  6,  1865,  ...  I  was  25  the 
preceding  June.  Lizzie  and  I  were  reading 
"Latin"  (Virgil  I  think).  I  was  (at  that  time) 
reading  Greek  and  bought  a  Greek  Testament 
that  day.  I  attended  the  Concordia  Lyceum 
that  evening  and  "debated  the  merits  of  literary 
criticism." 

On  October  28th  he  had  been  writing  of 
the  human  race  and  so  he  says  in  a  letter: 

Those  two  correlative  principles, — the  blood  bond 
and  the  race  hatred — have  worked  all  results. 
The  latter  results  in  the  race  struggle  which 
produced  all  the  great  secondary  institutions. 

On  October  30,  1910,  he  writes: 

That  year  1869   .    .    .   was  a  wonderful  year 
in  my  life.    It  saw  me  take  my  A.B.  degree  and 
begin  my  course  in  law;  it  saw  the  Dynamic 
[102] 


Sociology  begun;  it  saw  the  Iconoclast  started, 
and  I  find  that  I  was  really  writing  about  all  the 
time  before  I  began  the  Dynamic  Sociology.  I 
have  before  me  quite  a  series  of  unpublished 
manuscripts  that  I  wrote  in  the  first  half  of 
1869.  I  made  only  one  effort  to  publish  any  of 
them,  and  that  failed.  One  of  these  is  entitled 
Common  Sense  versus  Theology  in  five  chapters, 
begun  on  January  23d  and  finished  on  February 
25th:  Another  is  entitled  Reason,  six  pages  of 
foolscap,  written  March  ll-14th.  Another  is 
called  Signs  of  the  Times,  and  contains  twenty- 
six  pages  of  foolscap,  written  from  March  31st 
to  May  llth.  Then  my  graduation  oration  on 
The  Invention  of  Printing,  written  May  14th  to 
June  22d,  and  committed  to  memory  and  de- 
livered without  anything  before  me. 

Scarcely  a  day  passed  that  I  did  not  write 
something.  I  have  read  parts  of  these  essays. 
.  .  .  They  would  do  to  print  now.  The  one 
on  Signs  of  the  Times  is  profound  and  philo- 
sophical  I  had  no  thought  of  pub- 
lishing them.  I  just  wrote,  as  Nietzsche  says, 
"to  get  rid  of  my  thoughts."  But  I  could  not 
get  rid  of  them.  They  crowded  upon  me,  and  on 
April  13,  I  say  in  my  diary:  "I  drew  up  a  rough 
plan  for  the  book  I  am  going  to  write.  I'm 
bound  to  commence  it  this  summer."  In  the 
French  journal  that  I  kept  that  year  and  wrote 
up  every  Sunday  for  the  preceding  week,  I  say 
[103] 


Hester  Jf .  ffltati 

under  that  same  date:  "J'ai  fait  quelques  notes 
pour  arranger  quelque  plan  pour  un  livre  que  je 
suis  determine  de  commencer  serieusement  sur 
mon  jour  de  naissance  prochain.  J'ai  beaucoup 
de  pensees,  pourquoi  les  garder?"  The  French 
isn't  good,  but  it  shows  what  was  in  me.  On 
June  18th  I  wrote:  "According  to  my  resolu- 
tion, I  commenced  my  book.  Wrote  two  pages 
foolscap"  today.  Of  course  that  "Introduction" 
that  I  began  that  day  and  finished  Oct.  1st,  was 
never  used,  but  I  have  it.  I  began  the  book 
proper,  writing  on  the  note-paper  that  I  showed 
you,  on  Nov.  15th,  and  the  first  chapter  I  wrote 
was  the  one  that  is  now  Chapter  IX,  and  which  I 
called  "Utility"  then. 

It  is  such  "notes,"  and  quotations  from 
these  letters  that  bring  one  close  to  Dr.  Ward's 
real  nature,  and  one  can  readily  perceive  what 
a  great  mistake  was  committed  when  such 
a  long  record  of  his  years,  carefully  kept  in 
detail  day  after  day  and  month  after  month  in 
his  diaries,  was  totally  and  ignorantly  burned! 

I  have  read  the  "early  manuscripts"  he 
refers  to  and  find  them  filled  with  ideas  which 
to-day  would  be  new  or  refreshing  to  a  large 
number  of  people. 

[104] 


&  personal 

He  was  methodical  to  the  extreme.  He 
felt  the  necessity  of  method,  if  anything 
worth  while  was  to  be  accomplished.  Every 
idea  expressed,  every  quotation  copied,  every 
letter  of  importance  received,  every  book  and 
marked  subjects  in  the  book,  all  details,  in 
fact,  were  indexed  and  then  cross-indexed, 
so  that  he  could  turn  in  a  moment  to  anything 
he  desired  to  use  in  his  work. 

He  left  a  large,  valuable,  and  thoroughly 
interesting  ledger,  filled  with  quotations  in 
different  languages,  all  carefully  indexed, 
ready  for  instant  use.  He  was  naturally  a 
lover  of  languages.  He  knew  well  French, 
German,  Spanish,  Italian,  Russian,  and  some- 
thing even  of  the  Chinese  and  Japanese 
languages. 

I  had  made  some  study  of  Sanscrit,  and 
when  we  were  discussing  words  and  their 
roots  he  would  sometimes  say  to  me:  "Go  to 
the  '  Mother  language '  and  tell  me  all  you  can 
of  such  and  such  a  word."  One  word,  sacred 
to  the  Hindus,  we  had  much  joy  in  studying; 
the  word  AUM,  because  he  found  the  beauty 
[1051 


Jf . 

of  the  great  Cosmos  in  it,  and  a  sense  of 
Oneness,  an  idea  he  meant  to  expound  in  a 
book,  "the  last  one  of  his  system  of  philoso- 
phy," as  he  said.  He  thought  of  calling  it: 
"Continuity." 

One  day  in  a  walk  about  Providence,  R.  I., 
we  stopped  on  a  high  point  overlooking  the 
city,  and  I  jokingly  remarked:  "What  a 
wicked  city  Providence  must  be  to  need  so 
many  churches!"  He  was  silent  a  moment 
and  then  said:  "The  day  will  come  when 
every  church  spire  will  loom  up  as  a  center  of 
education.  Every  bit  of  knowledge  shall  be 
offered  to  all,  and  we  may  call  them  'Halls 
of  Science."' 

When  we  were  working  together  on 
Glimpses  of  the  Cosmos  in  1910,  he  wrote, 
Oct.  31st: 

I  am  going  on  with  the  history  of  Dynamic 
Sociology  and  am  now  in  1870.  I  certainly  am 
astonished  at  my  industry  that  year  too.  I 
was  studying  law  and  had  to  get  long  lessons  in 
that.  I  was  editing  the  Iconoclast  and  had  to 
write  all  those  articles  and  search  for  matter  for 
that,  and  yet  there  are  few  days  that  I  did  not 
[106] 


3  personal 

write  several  pages  in  Dynamic  Sociology.  Re- 
member that  I  worked  at  my  desk  from  9  till  4 
every  day,  and  we  kept  house  and  I  had  classes 
in  Latin,  German,  and  French!  Where  could  I 
have  got  the  time  ?  But  I  got  up  every  morning  at 
5.30  and  often  wrote  or  studied  before  breakfast. 

In  the  same  letter,  in  regard  to  something 
I  had  written  to  him  on  "Silence,"  he  says: 

What  a  lovely  thing  that  is  you  wrote  about 
"Silence."  You  must  find  spots  in  your  stories 
and  books  to  weave  in  such  great  literary  gems. 
That  was  the  charm  of  Victor  Hugo  to  me.  He 
devoted  half  his  space  to  grand  soliloquies  and 
eloquent  apostrophes.  I  call  this  of  yours  the 
Apotheosis  of  Silence. 

On  "Sunday  noon,  Nov.,  1910,"  he  writes: 

I  am  reading  diaries  again  and  have  got 
through  with  1871.  I  was  then  writing  what  I 
called  Vol.  II.  I  had  given  my  book  no  name 
yet,  but  I  find  an  old  memorandum,  jotted  down 
in  April,  1869,  with  the  heading  "Plan  of  the 
Great  Panacea."1  I  will  show  it  to  you  when  you 
come  again.  It  gives  a  table  of  contents  of  8 
"Books,"  each  with  several  chapters,  and  three 

1  Now  in  John  Hay  Library,  Brown  University,  Provi- 
dence, R.  I.,  in  the  "Ward  Room." 


Jf , 

"Books"  not  numbered.  The  chapters  are 
named.  It  relates  almost  entirely  to  education, 
but  education  means  knowledge  always.  Then 
there  is  another  memorandum,  not  dated,  but 
doubtless  written  before  I  commenced  writing 
the  book,  and  which  deals  with  the  logical  ar- 
rangement of  the  subjects.  It  enumerates  four 
"logical  arguments,"  and  is  the  forerunner  of 
the  final  arrangement  at  the  end  of  Chapter  VIII. 
There  are  foreshadowed  the  chapters  on  Utility 
(IX),  Progress  (X),  Action  (XI),  Opinions  (XII), 
and  Education  (XIV),  but,  the  chapter  on 
knowledge  (XIII)  is  not  early  shown.  Much  is 
said  about  "circumstances"  and  I  really  had  to 
come  back  to  this  in  Applied  Sociology  (Oppor- 
tunity). Now  I  find  in  reading  the  diaries  that 
I  did  take  these  subjects  up  in  this  order  and 
wrote  a  chapter  on  circumstances,  between  the 
one  on  progress  and  the  one  on  opinions.  The 
chapter  on  actions  followed  the  one  on  opinions, 
instead  of  preceding  it.  All  this  I  called  Volume 
I  of  the  book,  and  the  chapter  on  Education  was 
the  first  of  Volume  II.  I  was  still  writing  that 
at  the  end  of  1871.  You  saw  the  big  manuscript 
of  it  that  was  never  published.  Then  you  know 
there  was  to  be  another  chapter  which  was  begun 
and  never  finished.  It  was  called  "  Melioration," 
I  think. '  I  do  not  find  it,  and  I  think  you  took  it. 

1  The  title  is  Meliorism;  I  returned  it.     It  is  now  at 
Providence  in  the  "  Ward  Room." 

[108] 


3  ^personal  &fectcij 

If  so  you  need  not  return  it  unless  I  ask  you  to. 
Perhaps  you  can  bring  it. 

We  were  talking  one  day  of  the  power  of  a 
knowledge  of  Evolution.  Soon  afterwards 
the  following  came  in  a  letter: 

November  7, 1910.  You  say  I  am  conservative 
in  my  lectures  to  my  classes.  Of  course  I  must 
be.  But  I  find  no  difficulty  in  it.  I  put  such 
interpretations  on  all  the  old  things  that  they  do 
not  conflict  with  the  truths  of  science.  I  have 
recently  been  discussing  the  location  of  the  Gar- 
den of  Eden  and  of  the  sons  of  Noah  in  connection 
with  the  peopling  of  the  earth  and  the  formation 
of  human  races,  and  it  all  fits  in  well  with  the 
latest  theories.  So  with  all  the  old  cosmogonies. 
I  make  them  tally  perfectly  with  science.  There 
is  one  principle  that  I  have  formulated  which 
does  the  most  of  it.  I  call  it  "the  personification 
of  evolutionary  processes."  Nothing  was  known 
of  evolution  till  the  19th  century.  When  men 
saw  that  things  were  different  in  their  own  time 
from  what  tradition  told  them  they  had  once 
been,  their  only  explanation  was  that  some  great 
man,  demi-god,  or  god,  had  arisen  and  changed 
it  all.  Every  race  has  a  particular  man  who 
gave  it  a  marriage  system.  Cadmus  gave  Greece 
its  alphabet.  Prometheus  gave  fire  to  the  world. 
[109] 


Heater  Jf .  ®Harb 

We  know  that  neither  Solon  nor  Lycurgus  made 
any  laws.  They  only  codified  the  laws  that  had 
grown  up  in  Athens  and  Sparta.  And  so  with 
the  rest.  The  Noachian  deluge  (and  all  races 
have  a  story  of  a  deluge)  is  the  geographical  his- 
tory of  the  earth  as  the  land  rose  out  of  the  sea. 
The  Garden  of  Eden  is  the  region  where  the 
human  race  originated,  and  the  expulsion  from 
it  is  the  dispersion  of  mankind.  The  Book  of 
Genesis  (borrowed  from  far  older  cosmogonies) 
is  the  ontogenetic  recapitulation  of  the  phylo- 
genetic  evolution  of  the  universe ....  In  the 
third  term  I  deal  with  the  origin  and  develop- 
ment of  all  primary  institutions — Religion, 
Morality,  Philosophy,  Language.  I  have  no 
trouble  with  any  of  them,  and  the  class  is  always 
specially  pleased  with  my  treatment  of  religion. 
At  the  close  I  usually  say  something  about  the 
future  of  religion  and  even  of  the  church,  and 
combat  the  view  that  religion  will  pass  away  and 
be  merged  in  ethics.  It  has  a  grand  mission  of 
its  own:  As  it  began  in  awe  and  fear  of  nature, 
it  will  end  in  awe  and  love  of  nature. 

I  have  often  heard  those  who  have  read 
Lester  Ward's  books  assert  that  he  was  "a 
rank  materialist,"  and  yet  he  was  a  truly 
spiritual  man.  We  often  talked  of  the  various 
effects  of  prayer,  and  he  always  explained  that 
[110] 


he  never  denied  its  effects.     He  wrote  me 
once: 

Sunday  morning,  9:30,  Nov.  13,  1910:  I  must 
offer  my  morning  prayer  before  I  go  to  work.  I 
believe  in  the  efficacy  of  prayer.  One  of  my 
students  lately  asked  me  if  I  did  and  I  told  him 
yes.  I  can  work  better  for  it.  Do  you  remember 
how  poor  Comte  went  regularly  to  the  tomb  of 
Clothilde  to  pray?" 

The  words  "poor  Comte"  might  be  mis- 
interpreted by  some.  Ward  never  felt  that 
Comte  was  to  be  pitied  on  account  of  his  love 
and  admiration  for  Clothilde.  He  rather  felt 
it  was  a  pity  that  a  great  man  like  Auguste 
Comte  had  not  found  in  Clothilde  a  woman 
who  would  have  been  able  more  perfectly  to 
fulfill  his  life.1 

Once  I  used  the  word  "  intellectual "  instead 
of  "psychic."  He  wrote,  Jan.  29,  1911: 

I  say  psychic  instead  of  intellectual,  because 
it  embraces  the  whole  of  mind.  The  feelings 

1  When  speaking  of  prayer  Dr.  Ward  never  meant  that 
he  prayed  to  any  God,  but  the  sense  of  aspiration,  and 
thoughts  voluntarily  made  toward  Truth  and  Beauty 
strengthened  man's  finer  character. 

[Ill] 


Hester  $ . 

and  emotions  are  psychic  as  well  as  the  intellect. 
A  true  psychic  Heaven  includes  all  Heights  and 
Depths.  There  is  a  constant  circulation  from 
one  pole  to  the  other,  and  the  whole  sphere  of 
existence  is  filled  with  every  kind  of  radiation 
perpetually  mingling  in  a  glorious  ethereal  at- 
mosphere of  thought  and  feeling.1 

Again,  something  I  wrote  attracted  him, 
and  he  says  Feb.  1,  1911: 

What  a  fine  new  expression  "The  Great  Dome 
of  Life" !  Ah !  you  are  an  artist  in  expression.  It 
gives  an  instantaneous  picture  of  our  Psychic 
Heaven. 

On  Wednesday  evening,  March  8,  1911, 
he  wrote  about  a  poem  I  had  written  and 
sent  to  him.  In  it  were  some  scientific 
references.  He  remarks: 

You  seem  so  to  love  my  scientific  way  of  il- 
lustrating things  that  most  people  would  con- 
sider cold.  It  is  because  they  do  not  understand 

1  One  day  writing  to  him  in  a  poetical  strain  about  the 
charm  of  minds  thinking  together,  I  said:  "and  we  will 
float  together  on  sunset  wings  of  fairy  thought."  This 
pleased  him  so  that  he  sent  a  long  letter  and  said:  "life 
should  have  far  more  'sunset  wings  of  fairy  thought,'  the 
mingling  of  great  thoughts  and  great  feelings." 

[112] 


3  personal  £>t*ctcfj 

that  science,  i.e.,  the  real  and  true,  has  all  the 
warmth  of  life. 

On  Sunday  evening,  March  12,  1911,  he 
wrote  in  regard  to  some  questions  I  asked 
him  about  his  childhood  days: 

What  a  lot  of  questions  you  ask  about  my 
childhood!  Sometime  I  may  tell  you  a  lot  of 
things  about  it  when  we  are  together.  It  seems 
so  unimportant  to  me.  Not  worth  the  effort  to 
write.  How  readers  of  books  do  want  personal 
things  about  the  authors!  One  of  the  ladies  in 
my  11-20  class  came  in  the  other  morning  all  in 
a  glow  and  came  up  to  me  before  the  lecture  and 
said  she  had  been  reading  in  Pure  Sociology,  how 
I  used  to  gather  and  name  the  flowers  (pp.  189- 
190),  and  of  our  calling  the  yellow  puccoon  the 
"sweet-john"  amused  her  immensely.  Yes,  I 
did  know  the  sheep  all  apart  and  named  them. 
I  remember  some  of  their  names  now.  How  well 
I  remember  the  lambs.  We  were  greatly  inter- 
ested in  the  early  Spanish  conquests  in  America, 
and  three  of  the  lambs  were  promptly  named 
Pedro,  Pizzaro,  and  Cortes!  How  Pedro  would 
shake  his  tail  when  I  fed  him  his  milk !  How  silly 
it  all  is!  Yes,  my  brother  told  me  which  room 
I  was  born  in,  and  I  have  stated  it  in  a  note 
descriptive  of  the  photograph  which  forms  the 
frontispiece  of  the  Biography  scrap-book. 

8  [113] 


Hester  Jf . 

He  enjoyed  long  walks,  and  in  the  woods 
would  follow  certain  directions  to  discover 
the  geological  strata  he  so  liked  to  study. 

On  "Sunday,  June  4,  1911,  1  P.M."— he 
wrote  from  Providence: 

I  am  in  the  woods  again.  I  could  not  resist 
this  beautiful  morning.  My  chair  is  the  soft 
rich  mold  with  a  rock  at  my  back  and  a  friendly 
little  oak  shading  me  from  the  sun's  rays.  I  am 
off  in  the  north  section  close  to  the  city  line 
beyond  the  Wanskuck  and  Geneva  mills.  I  am 
trying  to  follow  the  boundary  between  the  Cam- 
brian and  the  Carboniferous  rocks.  My  route 
will  now  be  south  west  and  I  may  come  out  near 
where  I  did  last  Monday. 

After  a  stay  at  my  country  home  for  several 
weeks  he  sailed  for  Europe  to  attend  the  great 
Monist  Congress  in  Hamburg;  and  on  Mon- 
day evening  Aug.  21,  1911,  he  writes  of  the 
splendid  weather  he  is  enjoying,  the  beautiful 
sunset,  and  then  adds : 

I  have  had  one  thought  today,  totally  discon- 
nected with  anything  in  the  situation.  I  have  no 
idea  how  it  arose.  Just  for  novelty  I  will  tell  you 
what  it  was.  Something  or  nothing  set  me  to 

[114] 


3  personal 

thinking  about  cycads,  and  about  how  the  fossil 
ones  must  have  looked  at  the  time  they  were  grow- 
ing. The  landscape  of  that  period  rose  before  my 
mental  vision.  I  have  often  had  this  occur,  and 
once  or  twice  I  have  briefly  described  it  in  my 
papers.  Once  I  know  in  a  paper  entitled  Recent 
Discoveries  of  Fossil  Cycadean  Trunks  in  the  Iron 
Ore  Beds  of  Maryland.  I  think  you  have  it,  for 
I  have  many  copies  left.  Now  you  know  that  I 
have  lantern  slides  of  many  ideal  landscapes  of 
past  ages,  and  what  I  thought  was  what  a 
splendid  ideal  landscape  you  could  paint  or  pic- 
ture, having  seen  the  cycads  at  Yale  and  the 
living  ones  at  Bronx.  You  could  represent  a 
Sequoian  forest  with  an  undergrowth  of  cycads. 
We  could  make  a  slide  of  it  and  put  it  with  my 
collection ! 

And  again,  August  29th,  writing  from  Chris- 
tiania  he  says: 

The  old  Viking  Ship  is  most  interesting.  It 
was  found  in  a  tumulus  or  buried  moupd  on  the 
Fjord.  The  chief  to  whom  it  belonged  was  evi- 
dently buried  in  his  ship.  Other  relics  found  with 
it  fix  the  date  in  the  9th  Century,  so  it  had  lain 
there  a  thousand  years.  It  was  embedded  in 
clay,  which  preserved  the  wood  from  decaying. 
Clay  is  a  wonderful  preservative.  All  the  best 
fossils  are  found  in  clay.  Sand,  however  fine, 
[115] 


Hesrter  Jf  . 


fails  to  preserve  them,  because  the  oxygen  of  the 
silica  is  disengaged  and  erodes  them. 

Speaking  of  the  meetings  of  the  Monists, 
he  says  : 

There  is  activity  at  the  University  today,  the 
street  in  front  is  decorated  with  flags  and  greens. 
The  students  have  some  doings  tomorrow,  and 
Monday  the  festivities  begin.  I  shall  stay  to 
those  of  Tuesday  and  Wednesday,  and  leave  for 
Hamburg  Thursday  morning. 

Of  Christiania  he  writes  on  September  3, 
1911: 

I  presume  I  know  it  and  its  environs  better  than 
most  of  those  who  live  here.  I  have  looked  into 
every  nook  and  corner  and  been  to  many  places 
not  mentioned  in  the  guide  books.  It  gives  me  a 
glimpse  of  Scandinavia,  and  is  about  all  I  shall 
see.  I  shall  probably  stay  one  night  in  Copen- 
hagen, but  shall  not  see  much  of  it  as  I  leave  for 
Hamburg  in  the  morning.  Yesterday  I  went  to 
Bygd  again  and  had  an  enjoyable  afternoon 
there.  The  other  time  I  saw  only  the  east  side 
and  central  portion,  but  the  west  side  is  the 
finest.  The  shores  are  bold  and  rocky,  and  all 
the  rocks  are  wonderfully  scratched  and  grooved 
by  glacial  action.  I  never  before  saw  glacial 

[116] 


3  Personal 

striae  on  such  a  scale.     I  lay  down  on  them  and 
rested  for  an  hour. 

From  the  "Hotel  de  1'Europe,  Hamburg, 
Saturday,  Sept.  9,  6  P.M.,"  he  writes: 

I  feel  guilty  of  postponing  my  atoll1  so  long,  but 
really  I  have  not  had  a  moment's  time  for  any- 
thing. I  came  from  Christiania  here  Thursday 
and  Friday,  riding  all  night  Thursday  night  and 
arriving  here  at  10  o'clock  yesterday  morning. 
It  took  all  day  to  find  things  and  get  settled. 
Haeckel  is  not  here  but  we  are  all  going  in  a  body 
to  Jena  to  see  him.  Today  I  have  been  out  to 
Hagenbeck's  Thiergarten  at  Stillingen,  about 
sixteen  miles  from  the  centre  of  the  city.  There 
was  a  big  Mittagessen  there,  but  I  took  a  good 
look  at  the  animals,  which  are  fine.  To-night 
we  have  the  first  public  meeting  with  addresses 
by  Ostwald  and  others.  Haeckel  is  down  for  an 
address.  He  has  probably  sent  it  and  it  will  be 
read.  I  must  tell  you  a  little  about  the  pilgrim- 
age to  Jena.  We  went  on  Tuesday  and  returned 
yesterday.  There  was  a  torchlight  procession 
nearly  a  quarter  of  a  mile  long  past  his  (Haeck- 
el's)  villa  Tuesday  evening  and  he  spoke  a  few 
words  from  a  high  balcony.  Yesterday  morn- 
ing a  small  deputation  waited  on  him,  about 
twenty,  and  I  was  made  the  first  to  address  him. 

1  Atoll  was  the  word  he  applied  to  our  letters. — E.  P.  C. 
[117] 


Hester  Jf . 

I  did  not  make  any  speech,  but  referred  to  my 
championing  of  his  views  long  ago;  he  then,  of 
his  own  accord  mentioned  our  only  meeting  on 
top  of  the  Uitleberg,  near  Zurich,  in  1894,  seven- 
teen years  ago.  I  said  I  wondered  whether  he 
remembered  it,  and  that  I  should  never  forget 
it.  He  referred  to  my  books  and  specially 
mentioned  the  Dynamic  Sociology. 

Thursday  Evening  (Hamburg),  September  14, 
1911.  I  want  now  to  give  you  a  little  idea  of  this 
Congress  of  Monists.  The  astounding  thing  is 
its  popularity  and  every  word  said  was  listened 
to  and  applauded  to  the  echo.  One  would  think 
that  all  Germany  had  turned  monists.  As  I  was 
only  an  invited  guest  I  took  no  part  in  the  pro- 
ceedings, but  the  first  night  at  the  "  Begriissung  " 
I  was  urged  to  speak,  but  declined.  The  speeches 
were  all  merely  addresses  of  welcome  of  the  most 
popular  sort,  and  any  statement  of  principles 
would  have  been  wholly  out  of  place.  The 
regular  meetings  had  their  programs  all  arranged, 
and  there  was  no  chance  for  outsiders.  Wake- 
man  tried  to  get  them  to  give  me  twenty  minutes, 
but  they  could  not,  and  I  was  glad,  for  I  did  not 
want  to  make  a  speech  in  English,  when  nearly 
all  the  rest  were  German.  Wakeman's,  as  I 
told  you,  was  very  short  and  in  German,  but  he 
had  an  expansion  of  it  printed  the  next  day. 
There  was  a  man  here  named  Morton,  who  is  the 
one  that  read  the  poem  at  the  Sunrise  Club,  and 
[118] 


&  Personal 

who  represents  a  lot  of  free-thinking  societies, 
including  Esperanto.  He  had  unlimited  con- 
fidence and  made  a  speech  one  evening.  He  is 
a  rather  bright  fellow.  I  did  not  attend  the 
meetings  of  delegates,  although  invited  to,  but 
on  Friday  they  elected  me  an  "  Ehrenpresident " 
of  the  Congress,  along  with  four  others,  one  of 
whom  was  Carus,  who  was  here  and  spoke  at  the 
Begriissung.  I  had  some  talks  with  him  later, 
but  he  did  not  appear  on  any  of  the  programs. 
Besides  the  public  meetings  which  were  very 
long,  they  had  a  whole  series  of  characteristic 
German  entertainments  at  great  restaurants, 
with  a  dinner  in  the  middle  of  the  day  and  a 
"Festtafal"  in  the  evening.  I  took  most  of  it  in, 
but  the  crowds  were  so  great  that  it  was  hard 
for  those  acquainted  to  find  each  other.  But  I 
kept  making  new  acquaintances,  some  of  whom 
will  be  valuable.  I  was  generally  given  a  place  of 
honor  at  the  feasts.  The  courses  are  interrupted 
by  speeches  all  the  way  through  the  meal. 
Whenever  I  could  decently  get  away  I  went  off 
looking  at  the  city,  down  to  the  Elbe  and  along 
the  great  docks  either  in  the  boats  that  con- 
stantly run,  or  on  foot.  One  day  the  whole 
party  visited  the  docks  on  the  left  bank,  where 
they  are  building  a  ship  that  will  rival  the 
Olympic,  and  we  were  brought  up  alongside  of 
the  immense  Kaiserin  Auguste  Victoria,  and 
allowed  to  go  aboard  her.  I  believe  she  sailed 

[119] 


Heater  $  . 


day  before  yesterday.  Well,  in  this  way  the  four 
days  were  got  through  with.  The  speaking  was 
almost  entirely  declamation  and  general  discus- 
sion. The  only  two  scientific  papers  were  those 
of  Jacques  Loeb  on  Life,  and  Arrhenius  on  the 
Universe.  These  were  both  illustrated,  the  for- 
mer by  charts,  the  latter  by  lantern  views.  The 
Congress  closed  on  Monday  night,  but  a  very 
large  number  took  the  9-45  train  Tuesday  morn- 
ing for  Jena  to  see  Haeckel.  I  left  everything  in 
my  room  and  returned  to  it  late  last  night.  We 
reached  Jena  at  half  past  six.  I  was  assigned  a 
room  in  a  first  class  hotel.  I  got  a  chance  to 
join  a  small  group  before  dark,  one  of  whom  knew 
everything  about  Jena  and  explained  to  the  rest, 
and  to  go  around  and  see  the  principal  places 
of  interest.  One  of  these  was  the  great  Zeiss 
optical  instrument  factory,  of  which  I  sent  you  a 
picture.  Jena  is  a  beautiful  place,  and  there  is  a 
park  along  the  banks  of  the  Saale,  which  is 
charming.  At  eight  o'clock  we  all  joined  a 
torchlight  procession  and  marched  past  Haeck- 
el's  villa  .  .  .  Jena  simply  adores  Haeckel. 
Everything,  everywhere  is  Haeckel,  Haeckel, 
Haeckel  !  And  it  almost  seems  as  if  all  Germany 
shared  the  spirit.  I  really  believe  he  is  the  most 
popular  man  in  Germany. 

Toward  the  end  of  our  work  on  Glimpses 
of  the  Cosmos,  I  began  to  urge  him  to  write 
M120] 


£1  personal  £»Uctcfj 

one  more  book  to  serve,  as  it  were,  as  a  cap- 
stone to  his  System  of  Philosophy.  He  was 
interested  in  the  idea,  especially  from  the 
viewpoint  of  religion.  He  said  that  the 
necessity  of  some  religion,  some  expression 
of  man's  inner  feelings  and  thoughts,  would 
always  be  necessary.  Monday  noon,  Septem- 
ber 18,  1911,  he  wrote: 

I  have  been  thinking  a  good  deal  about  the  book 
you  so  much  want  me  to  write  when  the  Glimpses 
are  done.  The  great  popularity  of  Monism  in 
Europe  has  led  me  to  think  that  I  might  call  the 
book  by  that  name.  They  mean  by  it  the  same 
as  I  do  by  Continuity,  and  that  would  not  at- 
tract attention.  One  night  in  Hamburg  this 
thought  came  over  me  so  strongly  that  I  got  up 
at  four  o'clock  and  wrote  it  down.  This  is  the 
title  I  wrote,  Monism  the  True  Quietism,  or  the 
Continuity  of  Nature  the  only  Faith  that  can 
satisfy  the  emancipated  Soul. 

Before  Dr.  Ward  sailed  for  Europe  I  asked 
him  if  he  cared  to  borrow  my  copy  of  Wein- 
inger's  Sex  and  Character?  He  replied  that 
he  did  not  care  to  borrow  my  English  trans- 
lation, but  would  some  time  try  to  own  a 
[121] 


copy  in  the  original  German.  So  I  had  the 
pleasure  of  giving  him  a  copy  in  German  to 
take  with  him.  He  was  impressed  with  the 
book  and  wrote  me  several  times  in  regard 
to  Weininger's  theory.  On  October  llth, 
returning  on  the  Romanic  from  Naples,  he 
finished  the  volume.  He  writes  me: 

I  must  tell  you  that  last  night  at  10.30,  reading 
in  the  smoking-room,  I  at  last  finished  Weinin- 
ger's Geschlecht  und  Character.  I  began  it  on  the 
Helig  Olaf  about  half  way  over.  I  read  a  good 
deal  in  Christiania,  in  Freiburg,  and  in  Naples, 
but  I  read  slowly  and  looked  over  the  notes  at 
the  end  with  great  care.  They  are  splendid. 
He  works  as  I  do,  carefully,  exactly,  honestly, 
making  his  references  full,  exact  and  with  ap- 
propriate comments.  I  like  his  literary  style 
immensely.  His  chapter  on  the  Jews  is  particu- 
larly interesting,  as  he  says  he  is  of  Jewish  de- 
scent, and  yet  he  scores  them  mercilessly,  without 
being  at  all  anti-Semitic.  His  standpoint  is  high 
and  noble,  and  so  thoroughly  objective  and 
judicial.  He  was  really  a  Christian,  a  converted 
Jew,  but  his  ideas  on  religion  are  highly  philo- 
sophical. One  cannot  help  admiring  the  man. 
In  his  final  chapter  he  "flats  out"  completely, 
and  proves  himself  a  confirmed  mystic.  He 
[122] 


3  personal  g>feetcf) 

takes  Tolstoi's  view  that  all  intercourse  between 
the  sexes  is  sinful,  that  the  "Koitus"  is  the  great, 
the  original,  the  only  sin,  and  brought  on  the 
"fall  of  man."  Schopenhauer  showed  this  to  be 
the  true  meaning  of  the  story  of  Adam's  fall  in 
Genesis,  and  I  have  never  doubted  it,  but  it 
shows  how  superficial  is  our  popular  teaching  of 
the  Bible,  for  until  I  read  this  in  Schopenhauer  I 
never  thought  of  such  an  interpretation.  I  do 
not  believe  one  in  a  million  understands  it.  The 
interesting  part  of  this  treatment  by  Weininger, 
as  by  Tolstoi,  is  to  see  how  he  meets  the  fact  that 
complete  chastity  would  bring  the  race  to  an 
end.  The  two  mystics  practically  agree  on  this 
point,  that  that  is  no  concern  of  ours.  The  Old 
and  New  Testaments  both  teach  it,  Christ  gives 
much  countenance  to  it.  St.  Paul  distinctly 
advocates  it,  and  most  of  the  Fathers  of  the 
Church,  Origen,  St.  Augustine,  Tertullian,  loudly 
proclaim  and  demand  it.  Weininger  truly  says 
that  people  never  love  for  the  purpose  of  con- 
tinuing the  race,  and  also  that  those  who  really 
are  chaste  never  feel  guilty  of  neglecting  their  duty  to 
posterity!  that  no  one  ever  feels  that  he  is  in  duty 
bound  to  propagate  the  race.  All  this  is  true. 
Nature  is  greater  than  man,  and  has  arranged  for 
the  preservation  of  the  species  and  of  the  human 
race  "durch  Hunger  and  durch  Liebe."  I  am 
the  only  one  who  has  fully  worked  out  the  phil- 
osophy of  life  on  scientific  principles,  shown  what 
[123] 


Hester  Jf . 

feeling  (pleasure  and  pain)  means,  and  explained 
on  biological  principles  the  "origin  of  evil"  and 
of  good,  too;  in  fact  put  ethics  on  a  sound 
scientific  basis.  Without  this  I  do  not  wonder 
that  thinking  minds  go  wild  and  run  to  mystic- 
ism. It  is  to  them  all  a  great  mystery,  enigma, 
and  Verhdngnis.  How  grand  the  philosophy  of 
science  is  compared  with  all  metaphysical  specu- 
lations of  the  world !  I  do  not  wonder  that  those 
who  once  clearly  grasp  these  truths  feel  regener- 
ated, and  put  at  last  on  the  true  road  to  correct 
living.  They  see  for  the  first  time  what  they  are 
and  why  they  are  here,  as  well  as  what  they 
ought  to  do. 

Of   Lecky's  History  of  European  Morals 
he  writes,  October  14,  1911: 

I  do  not  generally  agree  with  his  conclusions, 
and  when  he  argues  it  is  what  Emerson  called 
"mush  of  concessions."  His  first  chapter  on 
The  Natural  History  of  Morals  is  mainly  argu- 
mentative and  a  defense  of  what  he  calls  the 
"intuitional"  theory,  intuition,  without  reason- 
ing about  it.  But  he  misses  the  truth  from  ig- 
norance of  biology  and  anthropology,  and  has 
no  clear  idea  of  causation.  I  am  now  reading  the 
second  chapter  on  Pagan  Morals,  which  is  purely 
historical  and  very  interesting.  It  deals  with 
Greek  and  Roman  philosophy,  especially  with 
[124] 


3  personal 

Epicureanism  and  Stoicism.  Its  great  value  to 
me  is  the  immense  number  of  quotations  from 
the  classic  writers  of  antiquity.  What  a  wonder- 
ful reader  he  must  have  been,  and  such  a  scholar. 
Another  case  of  great  learning  as  distinguished 
from  knowledge. 

Again,  on  October  15th,  2.30  P.M.,  writing 
"up  on  the  upper  deck  among  the  life-boats, 
but  in  the  bright  sunshine,"  he  says:  "The 
book  (Lecky's)  is  not  a  history  of  Morals  at 
all,  but  the  history  of  Religion." 

I  have  already  spoken  of  the  assistance  I 
was  able  to  render  him  in  sending  mottoes 
for  the  different  volumes  of  Glimpses  of  the 
Cosmos.  On  February  28,  1912,  he  wrote: 

I  would  love  to  have  some  from  Browning, 
Emerson,  and  the  Hindoo,  or  from  the  great 
Vedic  literature.  There  is  one  Indian  saying  that 
I  have  always  wanted  to  quote  but  cannot  find 
that  I  have  ever  done  so.  I  have  only  met  with 
it  in  Schopenhauer.  He  quotes  it  twice  in  Ger- 
man and  both  times  simply  says  it  is  an  Indian 
proverb.  In  German  it  is:  " Kein  Lotus  ohne 
Stengel."  In  English  it  would  be:  "No  Lotus 
without  a  stem."  The  beautiful  flower  lies  on 
the  water  like  a  water  lily,  and  the  observer  sees 
[125] 


Jf .  flfcrb 

no  stem,  but  a  small,  often  very  long,  peduncle 
extends  to  the  bottom  of  the  water,  however 
deep,  and  connects  it  with  the  great  root  mass 
buried  deeply  in  the  ooze.  The  proverb  typifies 
the  great  law  of  causation.  Everything  is  gen- 
etically connected  with  some  antecedent  cause 
out  of  which  it  grows  and  without  which  it 
could  not  exist.  It  may  be  said  to  be  the  essence 
of  the  whole  idea  of  continuity,  and  perhaps  I 
had  better  reserve  it  for  the  key  note  of  my  book 
on  continuity.  But  I  want  to  find  where  it 
occurs,  in  what  book  or  work.  I  might  even 
give  the  Sanscrit,  but  must  also  translate  it. 

Dr.  Ward  had  a  sincere  and  pure  desire 
to  have  the  world  develop  higher  sex-ideas. 
In  reading  his  books,  one  may  easily  find 
many  passages  that  suggest  fine  and  noble 
thoughts  on  this  subject.  On  Wednesday 
morning,  March  27,  1912,  he  begins  a  letter 
with  a  reference  to  this  subject: 

I  am  just  back  from  chapel.  A  man,  Dr.  F.  M. 
Seerly,  from  Springfield,  Mass.,  a  psychologist 
who  is  specializing  on  sex  hygiene,  and  will  lec- 
ture to  the  boys  on  that  subject  this  afternoon, 
spoke  fifteen  minutes  in  chapel,  and  said  some 
splendid  things.  He  said  the  world  is  devoting 
[126] 


&  personal 

all  its  professional  energies  to  problems  of  nu- 
trition (pure  food,  etc.)  and  neglecting  the  great 
problem  of  reproduction.  It  is  how  to  preserve 
the  individual,  never  how  to  continue  the  race. 
He  spoke  of  a  new  text  book  on  physiology  for 
the  schools  in  which  there  is  an  appendix  on 
sexual  physiology,  and  said  the  publisher  apolo- 
gized for  it,  and  said  it  might  be  omitted  when- 
ever that  was  thought  desirable.  That  which  is 
the  most  fundamental  and  important  relegated 
to  a  fine-print  appendix  and  apologized  for!  He 
said  our  knowledge  of  the  individual  body  was 
exhaustively  furnished  by  the  great  experts  in 
science,  while  all  the  knowledge  anyone  can  get 
of  the  great  laws  of  reproduction  comes  from 
priests  and  writers  of  fiction  and  contains  no 
science. 

He  writes,  "Thursday  morning,  April  18, 
1912": 

Your  letter  of  yesterday  written  in  the  midst  of 
work  about  the  place,  came  all  right.  I  was 
struck  with  the  remark  that  you  took  two  hours 
to  work  on  H.  &  D.1  How  much  that  means  to 
me.  Do  you  remember  George  Eliot's  phrase 
that  I  so  often  repeat?  "A  life  apart  from  cir- 
cumstantial things."  How  hard  it  is  to  realize! 

1  Heights  and  Depths,  the  novel  referred  to  on  page  55. 
I  dedicated  it  to  L.  F.  W. 

[127] 


Hester  Jf , 

Very  few  do.  Almost  everybody  allows  "cir- 
cumstantial things"  to  dominate  him  completely. 
Many  persons  of  talent  never  do  anything  be- 
cause they  have  not  the  power  to  cut  loose  from 
the  immediate  environment.  It  requires  dis- 
cipline. It  means  character,  which  I  maintain 
is  an  essential  part  of  genius. 

And  then  he  goes  on  in  the  same  thought: 

I  regard  it  as  simply  clear  mental  vision,  which 
scarcely  anybody  has.  It  is  the  power  to  dis- 
tinguish the  great  from  the  small,  the  important 
from  the  trivial.  But  it  is  also  philosophy.  You 
remember  La  Rochefoucauld's  maxim:  "Philo- 
sophy triumphs  over  the  past  and  the  future, 
but  the  present  triumphs  over  it." 

The  study  of  the  Matriarchal  period  in  the 
evolution  of  humanity  was  always  of  greatest 
interest  to  him.  Das  Mutterecht  of  Bachofen 
and  La  Mere  of  Girard  Toulon  he  read  aloud, 
and  often  he  would  break  off  from  the  reading 
to  enlarge  and  follow  out  details  of  thought 
that  kept  flashing  through  his  brain.  In  a 
letter  of  May  8, 1912,  he  writes: 

You  ask  how  long  the  matriarchal  period  was. 

It  began  with  the  human  race,  for  all  animals  are 

[128] 


3  personal 

in  the  matriarchal  state,  and  must  have  been 
till  man  discovered  paternity.  That  differs  with 
different  races.  Some  have  not  discovered  it 
yet.  (Australians).  But  taking  the  line  of  the 
historical  races,  matriarchy  seems  to  have  lasted 
till  about  the  13th  century  before  Christ.  The 
Androcratic  period  has  therefore  only  lasted 
about  3300  years,  call  it  4000,  maximum.  As 
the  human  race  is  supposed  to  have  existed 
300,000  years,  the  matriarchal  period  was 
296,000  Years! 

The  following  from  a  letter  of  October  28, 
1912,  may  be  quoted,  since  few  perhaps  have 
read  Bachofen: 

The  main  thought  that  forces  itself  upon  us  as 
we  reach  such  a  book  as  Bachofen's  is  that  in 
those  ancient  times,  instead  of  war,  politics, 
industry,  business,  and  the  various  subjects  that 
now  absorb  the  attention  of  mankind,  their  en- 
tire attention  was  concentrated  upon  domestic 
affairs,  upon  the  relations  of  the  sexes,  relation- 
ship, kinship,  and  such  internal,  personal  matters. 
The  relations  of  the  sexes  in  particular  engrossed 
their  energies,  and  all  strifes  and  wars  grew  out 
of  these  instead  of  the  lust  for  power,  or  even 
race  hostility.  The  reproductive  forces  play  a 
far  greater  r6le  in  prehistoric  than  in  historic 
9  [129] 


Hester  Jf . 

man.  How  little  such  matters  have  to  do  with 
modern  wars  or  with  politics!  They  were  the 
sole  motor  to  action.  If  they  could  have  written 
that  would  have  been  all  they  would  have  written 
about,  and  the  traditions  they  left  all  relate  to 
that.  Have  you  ever  thought  about  this?  And 
is  it  not  so?  The  great  parties,  one  might  almost 
call  them  political,  dealt  with  such  questions  as 
marriage  or  no  marriage,  mother  rule  or  father 
rule.  Each  had  its  leaders,  both  male  and 
female,  both  divine  and  human.  Neptune  and 
Vulcan,  Venus  and  Diana  stood  for  sexual 
freedom,  while  Hercules  and  Apollo,  Minerva 
and  Juno  strove  to  regulate  the  sexes  and 
establish  marriage.  The  parties  of  gynsecocracy 
and  androcracy  were  drawn  on  nearly  the  same 
lines.  And  they  fought  it  out  on  these  lines  in  a 
great  political  campaign  that  antedated  the 
dawn  of  history. 

On  November  10, 1912,  he  writes: 

...  I  read  a  good  deal  in  Bachofen.  I  have 
much  other  new  reading  matter  but  none  of  it 
interests  me  as  much  as  Bachofen.  I  have  been 
reading  his  long  account  of  the  early  people  of 
the  Island  of  Lesbos,  which  was  typically 
matriarchal,  and  produced  the  wonderful  poetess 
Sappho.  He  dwells  at  great  length  on  Sappho 
and  it  is  a  long  and  interesting  eulogy  of  her. 
[130] 


&  personal 

He  defends  her  against  all  her  maligners,  and 
holds  her  up  as  the  most  wonderful  character  of 
antiquity.  It  seems  that  there  is  extant  a  long 
treatment  of  her  by  Socrates,  who  also  praises 
her  and  defends  her.  I  would  like  to  get  that 
and  sometime  read  it  with  you.  Of  course  Plato 
did  »the  writing,  but  it  is  what  Socrates  said. 
Sappho  belonged  to  about  the  Dionysian  stage. 
She  joined  thought  with  love  and  feeling.  Her 
poems  were  erotic,  but  the  word  erotic  is  used  in 
the  higher  sense.  I  would  love  to  read  you  some 
beautiful  passages  from  Bachofen  in  which  he 
describes  it  and  defends  it  against  the  attacks  of 
the  purists.  He  says  it  is  pure,  deep,  natural  and 
sweet.  What  vast  unexplored  fields  there  are  that 
the  common  herd  know  nothing  about!  I  have 
never  read  a  book,  a  story,  a  romance,  that  I  was 
more  interested  in  than  I  am  in  Bachofen.  And  yet 
it  is  history  and  it  is  truth.  It  lets  the  light  into 
the  ancient  world,  and  is  edifying  in  the  extreme. 

I  had  written  to  him  about  war  and  its 
causes,  and  the  healing  processes.    He  replied : 

I  agree  that  the  love  of  power  and  the  ambition 
of  rulers  have  much  to  do  with  war.  The  masses 
do  not  want  it,  but  they  are  so  ignorant  that  they 
will  share  the  spirit  aroused  by  the  leaders,  and 
willingly  engage  in  it.  The  last  number  of  the 
Monistische  Jahrhunderi  contains  the  Bulgarian 
U311 


Heater  Jf . 

king  Ferdinand's  Manifesto  (declaration  of  war), 
and  it  is  largely  an  appeal  to  religious  prejudice. 
He  calls  it  a  "Kampf  des  Kreuzes  gagen  den 
Halbmond." 

On  January  22,  1913,  he  mentions  an  arti- 
cle about  him  I  had  been  asked  to  write  for  a 
Woman  Suffrage  Magazine  in  New  York  City : 

I  am  glad  she  was  pleased  with  your  article  on 
me.  If  you  get  an  extra  copy  of  the  paper  con- 
taining it  I  would  be  glad  to  see  it.  I  also  return 
your  article.  I  am  sorry  she  made  you  write  it. 
I  hate  aimless  praise,  ordered  and  compulsory.1 

Following  is  the  article : 
AN  APPRECIATION  OF  LESTER  F.  WARD 

To  all  who  are  interested  in  the  development  of 
humanity,  in  any  one  or  more  lines,  there  is  a 

1  Dr.  Ward  was  most  emphatic  in  expressing  dislike  of 
"  personal  praise."  He  cared  little  for  personal  popularity. 
I  begged  him  to  sit  for  a  bust,  and  also  for  a  portrait  in  oil. 
Professor  Koopman  of  John  Hay  Library,  Providence, 
R.  I.,  also  wanted  to  have  a  sculptress  make  a  marble  bust 
of  him,  but  Dr.  Ward  wrote  me:  "I  would  have  to  make 
many  long  sittings.  I  would  dread  it,  and  don't  believe  I 
will  do  it,  certainly  not  very  soon  .  .  .  and  I  do  not  see 
what  I  would  gain."  So  unconscious  was  he  of  any  "per- 
sonal" interest  in  himself.  It  was  always  what  he  thought 
and  not  his  personal  self  that  he  felt  must  necessarily  be  of 
interest  to  the  world. 

[132] 


3  "Personal 

sense  of  admiration  and  gratefulness  that  comes 
when  contemplating  those  men  and  women  who 
have  been  the  forerunners,  the  search-lights,  the 
leaders  for  a  great  truth. 

In  the  days  when  only  a  handful  of  women 
were  trying  to  spread  the  idea  of  freedom  for 
their  own  sex,  and  each  one  was  laughed  at, 
scorned,  ridiculed,  it  was  a  man  who  had  the 
brains  not  only  to  foresee  the  rights  that  natur- 
ally should  belong  to  woman,  but  the  heart  to 
feel  and  the  character  to  express  his  thoughts 
regarding  the  justice  of  giving  her  the  franchise. 

It  is  easy  enough  to  follow  a  crowd,  and  when 
"Votes  for  Women"  becomes  a  popular  and 
leisure  class  interest,  it  does  not  take  very  great 
courage  to  say  you  believe  in  giving  the  ballot  to 
woman;  but  when  the  whole  world  considered  it 
as  absurd,  forced,  unnatural,  ridiculous,  bad 
taste,  and  even  as  unsexing  womankind,  it  was 
necessary  to  have  a  few  giants  of  brain  and  heart 
arise  and  tear  down  the  veil  of  ignorance  and 
prejudice  that  at  that  time  existed  over  mostly 
all  minds  regarding  the  woman  question. 

It  was  at  a  banquet  held  in  1888,  in  Washing- 
ton, D.C.,  where  Mrs.  Elizabeth  Cady  Stanton, 
Mrs.  Jennie  June  Croly,  Mrs.  N.  P.  Willis  and 
others  were  all  present  that  Lester  F.  Ward 
spoke  on  the  subject  of  "Sex  Equality." 

Dr.  Ward  revealed  his  ideas  through  a  scien- 
tific explanation  of  the  sexes.  His  writings  are  so 
[133] 


well  known  today,  one  need  not  try  to  even  quote 
from  his  books,  but  he  showed  that  the  natural 
evolution  of  the  human  race  depicted  the  im- 
portant position  which  the  female  factor  had 
always  held. 

He  closed  his  address  with  these  words: 
"There  is  no  fixed  rule  by  which  Nature  has 
intended  that  one  sex  should  excel  the  other,  any 
more  than  there  is  any  fixed  point  beyond  which 
either  cannot  develop.  Nature  has  no  intentions, 
and  evolution  has  no  limits.  True  science 
teaches  that  the  elevation  of  woman  is  the  only 
sure  road  to  the  evolution  of  man." 

Any  one  who  has  read  Dr.  Ward's  Pure  Soci- 
ology cannot  help  but  recognize  the  noble  and 
broad  minded  position  he  has  always  taken 
towards  woman. 

The  cause  of  woman  lies  deeper  than  any  one 
particular  question.  It  is  a  law  of  nature  and  the 
development  of  the  true  freedom  of  woman  is  as 
necessary  to  improve  the  race,  as  it  is  that  man 
must  ever  keep  refining,  and  strengthening  his 
own  nature,  and  the  subtle  influence  of  the  char- 
acters of  the  mothers  of  the  world  will  show  in  the 
sons  that  will  be  the  future  fathers  of  the  genera- 
tions to  come. 

Nowhere  could  an  appreciation  of  Lester  F. 
Ward  be  given  more  honestly  than  in  a  Woman's 
suffrage  magazine. 

[134] 


0  $erscnal 

About  January  15,  1913,  he  began  to  re- 
mark about  his  health,  and  from  time  to  time 
would  mention  in  his  letters  various  feelings 
which  he  thought  might  come  from  indiges- 
tion or  from  asthma.  But  growing  better 
he  would  turn  from  the  subject  lightly  and 
refuse  to  call  in  a  physician.  On  February 
4th,  he  wrote:  "The  worst  is  the  weakness 
and  shortness  of  breath." 

Though  having  bad  spells  and  hard  days 
or  nights,  he  would  work,  work,  work,  and 
his  brain  was  as  keen  as  ever.  After  a  letter 
of  mine  on  Finot,  and  his  doctrine  of  races, 
he  says: 

I  have  read  something  of  Finot.  I  think  he 
attended  the  race-congress  and  ventilated  his 
views  there.  There  are  some  qualifications  of 
course,  but  the  general  idea  of  superior  and 
inferior  races  is  being  abandoned.  The  great 
difference  lies  in  the  equipment.  It  is  a  general 
expansion  of  my  egalitarian  ideas,  and  recogni- 
tion of  nurture  and  environment  as  the  great 
factors,  instead  of  nature  and  heredity. 

On  March  5,  1913,  after  saying  he  is  feeling 
better,  he  tells  me  of  his  class  work : 
[135] 


In  my  class  in  Applied  Sociology  I  have  reached 
the  point  where  I  discuss  the  "Ways  of  Improv- 
ing Society,"  and  classify  them  first  into  (1) 
attempts  to  improve  social  conditions  directly, 
and  (2)  attempts  to  improve  the  individual 
members  of  society.  The  first  of  these  ways  I 
leave  to  politicians  and  statesmen,  and  confine 
myself  to  the  second.  But  this  I  also  divide  up 
into  two  radically  different  methods,  viz.,  (1) 
attempts  to  increase  the  intellect,  and  (2)  at- 
tempts to  increase  intelligence. 

In  spite  of  the  illness  creeping  on,  he  per- 
sisted in  lecturing.  After  giving  an  address 
on  Eugenics  in  New  York  and  Philadelphia 
he  wrote  me: 

Fortune  favors  the  brave.  It  may  be  a  low 
one,  quality,  but  I  believe  I  have  it  in  a  marked 
degree.  I  never  knew  what  it  was  to  be  afraid. 
Of  course  no  thanks  to  me,  as  I  did  not  even  feel 
the  sensation. 

On  March  25th,  he  wrote  a  few  lines  from 
Providence  saying  he  felt  so  badly  that  he 
would  leave  earlier  than  the  regular  Easter 
Holiday.  He  arrived  in  New  York  and  went 
directly  to  Washington.  He  lived  only  a  few 
weeks,  passing  away  on  April  18,  1913. 
[136] 


&  personal 

Lester  Ward  died  as  he  lived,  bravely,  and 
without  fear.  None  more  than  he  has  in- 
sisted that  a  greater  civilization  would  evolve 
if  the  true  knowledge  of  the  world  was  given 
to  all.  "Every  member  of  society  is  equally 
the  heir  to  the  entire  social  heritage,  and  all 
may  possess  it  without  depriving  any  of  any 
part  of  it." 

Writing  of  the  high  place  which  sociology 
should  hold  among  the  sciences  we  may  well 
use  his  same  words,  in  thinking  of  the  noble 
aims  of  Lester  Ward's  life:  "The  cap-sheaf 
and  crown  of  any  true  system  of  classification 
of  the  sciences,  and  it  is  also  the  last  and 
highest  landing  on  the  great  staircase  of 
education."  His  aims  were  indeed  the  truest 
and  the  highest. 


[137] 


CHAPTER  V 

SYSTEM  OF  PHILOSOPHY 


[139 


CHAPTER  V 

SYSTEM   OF   PHILOSOPHY 

LESTER  F.  WARD  was  not  only  a  true 
philosopher,  and  our  very  greatest  sociologist, 
but  besides  this  his  contributions  to  botany, 
paleobotany,  geology,  anthropology,  and 
psychology  were  numbered  in  the  hundreds. 

His  idea  was  that  his  original  studies  in 
many  fields  were  particularly  for  the  founda- 
tion he  desired  in  the  treatment  of  Sociology 
as  the  crowning  science.  Philosophy  and 
science,  he  said,  must  be  ranked  as  achieve- 
ments, vast  and  far-reaching  in  their  con- 
sequences. 

Dr.  Ward  lived  to  see  his  philosophy 
triumph  in  the  minds  of  the  leaders  of  thought. 
His  daring  exposition  of  Nature's  methods 
which  he  proved  were  far  less  advantageous 
than  the  so-termed  artificial  method  of  man. 
[141] 


Hester  $ .  QUarb 

His  justification  of  the  ways  of  mind  in  his 
Psychic  Factors  of  Civilization,  published  in 
1893,  gives  us  the  philosophy  that  lies  at  the 
base  of  many  recent  developments  in  schools, 
governments  and  the  treatment  of  social 
problems. 

No  man  ever  insisted  more  rigidly  on 
scientific  methods,  but  none  ever  believed 
less  in  science  for  its  own  sake.  Ward's 
idea  was  always  to  work  out  a  system  of 
philosophy,  and  readers  can  never  forget  that 
the  purpose  of  helping  mankind  is  to  acceler- 
ate social  evolution. 

Throughout  his  entire  philosophy  runs  one 
dominating  and  organizing  thought:  the 
efficacy  of  conscious  effort  guided  by  in- 
telligence. Human  society,  as  we  to-day 
know  it,  is  not  the  passive  product  of  un- 
conscious forces.  It  lies  within  the  cosmic 
law,  and  so  does  the  mind  of  man;  and  this 
power  of  mind  has  knowingly,  artfully 
adapted,  and  over  and  over  again  adapted 
its  social  environment.  More  and  more  with 
reflective  intelligence  man  has  begun  to  direct 
[142] 


it  so  as  to  fulfil  man's  will.  This  should  be  car- 
ried out  by  constructive  intelligence  shaping 
the  material  of  verified  scientific  knowledge. 

Scientific  knowledge  must  be  socialized, 
the  distribution  of  our  intellectual  heritage 
must  be  bequeathed  to  all  equally.  One 
must  not  be  alone  intellectual,  but  intelligent 
in  his  winning  toward  the  goal  of  wisdom. 
Ward  significantly  showed  that  the  psychic 
factor  is  the  dominant  one  in  human  society. 
It  is  the  factor  which  must  receive  chief 
attention,  so  that  through  it  human  progress 
may  be  artificially  and  successfully  controlled. 

Education  is  the  chief  instrument  through 
which  social  progress  is  to  be  effected.  Edu- 
cation is  a  word  used  fluently  by  all  manner 
of  men  who  have  any  idea  regarding  uplifting 
humanity,  each  has  his  own  interpretation 
according  to  his  personal  viewpoint;  but 
Ward  distinctly  says  over  and  over  again 
what  he  means  by  education,  and  expressed 
in  many  ways  the  necessity  of  scientific 
knowledge  of  the  laws  and  materials  of 
nature  to  be  made  the  possession  of  all  man- 
[143] 


Hester  Jf .  Marti 

kind.  Education  must  not  alone  discipline 
the  mind,  it  must  equip  it  with  scientific  facts. 

"Inequality  of  intelligence  necessarily  re- 
sults in  the  cleavage  of  society  into  an  ex- 
ploiting and  an  exploited  class." 

"It  is  to  Knowledge  that  civilization  is 
due,  and  the  true  object  of  education  is  to 
confer  knowledge." 

"Everything  that  distinguishes  a  savage 
from  civilized  man  can  be  directly  or  in- 
directly traced  to  the  differences  of  educa- 
tion." In  spite  of  the  fact  that  the  consensus 
of  opinion  from  all  men  who  knew  Ward  and 
his  works,  was,  that  he  was  a  giant  in  the 
intellectual  world,  an  American  Aristotle, 
yet  very  modestly  does  he  speak  of  his  own 
contribution  toward  the  solution  of  social 
problems.  In  the  preface  of  Dynamic  Sdciol- 
ogy  (p.  vii)  he  says:  "That  my  own  contri- 
bution was  simply  a  product  of  the  Zeitgeist 
I  have  never  pretended  to  question." 

The  request  has  been  made  so  often  by 
many,  not  only  during  the  life  of  Ward  to 

[144] 


&  personal 

him,  but  since  his  death,  to  me,  that  a  short 
recapitulation  of  his  work  and  thought  should 
be  made.  Such  a  short,  concise  resume  is 
suggestive  for  use  in  sociological  work;  and 
as  an  inspiration  to  those  not  so  well  ac- 
quainted with  Ward  to  seek  a  deeper  reading 
of  his  system  of  philosophy.  I  have  quoted 
Dr.  Ward's  works  freely  in  this  chapter,  and 
it  is  with  great  modesty  I  offer  to  others  such 
a  tremendous  wealth  of  thought  in  such  a  few 
pages. 

In  attempting  to  give  a  clear  idea  of  what 
the  philosophy  of  Dr.  Ward  is,  we  shall  try 
to  turn  a  searchlight  upon  the  principal 
facts  underlying  his  contributions. 

Nature,  he  contended,  is  creative  and  the 
principle  of  creation  is  synergy:  chemical 
elements,  inorganic  compounds,  organic 
compounds,  protoplasm,  plants,  animals, 
man,  society.  Since  these  products  of  nature 
through  evolution  are  the  subject  matter  of 
the  respective  sciences,  their  order  of  appear- 
ance suggests  a  natural  classification  of  the 
sciences.  And  since  evolution  is  from  the 
10  [  145  ] 


simple  to  the  complex,  and  from  the  general 
to  the  special,  this  classification  is  practically 
the  same  as  that  of  Comte,  who  based  his 
famous  "hierarchy  of  the  sciences"  on  the 
principles  of  increasing  complexity  and  de- 
creasing generality. 

Dr.  Ward  drew  up  for  use  in  his  classes 
"A  Tabular  View  of  All  Knowledge  in  the 
Order  in  which  it  has  been  Evolved"  He  had 
this  made  into  a  large  Chart  six  feet  square 
and  hung  in  his  classroom.  (In  Glimpses  of 
the  Cosmos,  Vol.  VI,  p.  xix,  we  read:) 

The  arrangement  is  that  of  the  serial  classifica- 
tion of  the  sciences  as  given  in  the  first  two  col- 
umns of  the  Tabular  View  of  All  Knowledge, 
Vol.  V,  p.  150,  and  in  the  ascending  order,  but 
the  number  of  subsciences  is  considerably  in- 
creased and  made  to  include  certain  special  sub- 
jects on  which  I  have  written,  and  which  I  have 
endeavored  to  class  under  their  appropriate 
general  sciences.  I  have  always  maintained  that, 
as  this  includes  all  knowledge,  there  cannot  be  a 
subject  which  is  incapable  of  being  placed  under 
some  of  the  heads.  The  only  qualification  that 
this  requires  is  that  the  subject  must  relate  to 
real  things.  The  two  truly  abstract  sciences, 
[146] 


&  personal 

mathematics  and  logic,  which  deal  with  relations 
only,  the  first  with  quantitative,  and  the  second 
with  qualitative  relations,  are  simply  norms,  and 
do  not  fall  into  any  scheme  of  real  things.  I 
have  not  written  on  formal  logic,  though  I  have 
discussed  it  in  several  of  my  books,  but  a  few  of 
my  papers  may  be  incidentally  classed  under 
mathematics.  This  I  place,  as  did  Comte,  in 
front  of  the  whole  series.  Philosophy  may  be 
said  to  include  both  quantitative  and  qualitative 
relations,  but  it  also  covers  all  other  relations, 
and  most  of  the  papers  that  I  class  under  phil- 
osophy deal  with  concrete  sciences  as  well,  and 
the  numbers  will  also  be  found  under  these;  but 
I  thought  best  to  place  all  such  under  the  general 
head  of  philosophy.  As  this  obviously  cannot  be 
brought  under  any  one  of  the  sciences  proper,  its 
only  place  seems  to  be  at  the  head  of  the  list, 
and  I  have  so  assigned  it. 

I  have  not  written  on  any  branch  of  physics, 
but  had  had  occasion  to  deal  with  the  great 
physical  laws  of  the  universe.  This  I  call  cos- 
mology, and  put  it  in  the  place  physics  would 
have  occupied.  Nothing  else  needs  explaining 
till  the  special  social  sciences  are  reached,  falling 
under  sociology.  A  few  of  these  not  in  the  table 
are  introduced.  Under  philology,  which  includes 
everything  relating  to  language,  whether  spoken 
or  written,  I  have  placed  certain  by-products 
which  might  seem  to  belong  higher  in  the  list, 
[147] 


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[148] 


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[149] 


such,  namely,  as  letters  from  the  army  to  a 
friend,  my  personal  bibliography,  reviews  and 
press  notices,  official  reports,  and  even  bio- 
graphical sketches.  The  only  important  devia- 
tion from  the  table  here  is  the  transposition  of 
gamology  from  sociology  to  biology.  So  many  of 
my  papers  deal  with  the  sex  relations  of  the  lower 
animals  as  well  as  man,  and  especially  of  plants, 
that  it  seemed  proper  to  make  the  term  apply  to 
all,  and  not  merely  to  the  human  race.  The  word 
gamology  is  not  of  my  coining.  It  was  appar- 
ently first  used  by  a  French  publicist,  M.  Charles 
M.  Limousin,  in  a  communication  to  the  Societe 
Sociologique  de  Paris  on  June  14,  1905,  and 
appears  in  the  Revue  Internationale  de  Sociologie 
for  July,  1905,  Vol.  XIII,  p.  545.  The  etymology 
is  perfect  and  the  term  was  much  needed  for  all 
that  relates  to  marriage  and  to  the  relations  of 
the  sexes  in  general. 

A  uniform  terminology  for  all  the  sciences1 
seems  impossible,  but  in  the  table  I  have  made 
as  many  of  them  as  possible  end  in  -ology,  as 
indicating  a  treatise  on  or  treatment  of  the  sev- 
eral subjects  of  them,  and,  besides  gamology,  I 
have  introduced  a  few  other  unfamiliar  ones  for 
the  sake  of  uniformity.  Nomology  and  politology 
are  fully  justified,  because  there  is  no  single 
English  word  for  the  science  of  either  law  or  the 
state.  Ecology,  of  course,  as  introduced  by 

1  See  Outlines  of  Sociology,  pp.  139-140. 

[150] 


&  personal 

Haeckel  in  1866,  for  the  relations  of  the  organism 
to  its  environment,  has  passed  fully  into  biology, 
but  has  been  badly  perverted.  Its  broader  use 
here  may  be  accepted  without  affecting  the 
earlier  and  narrower  meaning.  Finally  ethology, 
so  improperly  applied  by  John  Stuart  Mill  to 
the  science  of  character,  and  still  more  improp- 
erly by  modern  biologists  to  ecology  in  Haec- 
kel's  sense,  has  been  restored  by  Wundt1  to  its 
proper  meaning,  as  I  use  it.  This  table  was  pre- 
pared and  enlarged  as  a  chart  for  use  in  my 
classes  two  years  before  the  appearance  of 
Professor  Sumner's  Folkways,  in  which,  on  pages 
36,  37,  and  561,  and  apparently  without  know- 
ing that  Wundt  had  already  done  so,  he  makes  a 
strong  plea  for  its  use  in  this  original  and  ety- 
mologically  correct  sense. 

In  unfolding  the  comprehensive  principles 
and  in  presenting  the  chief  outlines  of  Ward's 
system  of  philosophy  the  following  may  be 
stated  in  his  own  words: 

(See  Dy.  Soc.,  Preface,  pp.  xxvii,  xxviii.) 

1.  The  law  of  Aggregation,  as  distinguished 
from  that  of  Evolution  proper. 

2.  The  Theory  of  the  Social  Forces,  and  the 
1  Logik,  2  Aufl.,  Bd.  II,  S.  369  ff. 

[1511 


Hester  Jf , 

fundamental  antithesis  which  they  imply  be- 
tween Feeling  and  Function. 

3.  The  contrast  between  these  true  Social 
Forces  and  the  guiding  influence  of  the  Intellect, 
embodying  the  application  of  the  Indirect  Me- 
thod of  Conation  and  the  essential  nature  of 
Invention,  of  Art,  and  of  Dynamic  Action. 

4.  The  superiority  of  Artificial,  or  Teleologi- 
cal,  Processes  over  Natural,  or  Genetic,  Pro- 
cesses; and,  finally — 

5.  The  recognition  and  demonstration  of  the 
paramount  necessity  for  the  equal  and  universal 
Distribution  of  the  extant  Knowledge  of  the 
world,  which  last  is  the  crown  of  the  system  itself. 

Aggregation,  or  the  law  of  recompounding, 
is  in  chemical  union  explained  by  the  hypo- 
thesis that  the  molecules  of  the  components 
enter  into  a  new  aggregate.  This  chemical 
synthesis  has  long  been  believed  to  typify 
a  large  number  of  other  phenomena  in  all 
departments  of  nature.  "Truths  derived 
from  the  combination  of  other  truths  become 
truths  of  a  higher  order." 

Dr.    Ward   often   remarked:  "If   anyone 
knew  all  in  detail  that  my  Chart  represents, 
he  would  know  my  entire  philosophy." 
[152] 


&  "Personal 

He  said :  "The  work  of  the  true  philosopher 
is  preeminently  the  synthesis  of  human 
knowledge." 

Sufficient  knowledge  of  each  major  science, 
thus  to  understand  its  relationship  to  the 
others,  as  shown  in  the  hierarchy  of  his  Chart, 
was  considered  as  necessary  by  Professor 
Ward  to  comprehending  his  entire  system. 

The  Relation  of  Sociology  to  Astronomy, 
to  Physics,  to  Chemistry,  to  Biology,  to 
Psychology,  leads  us  to  what  concerns  the 
sociologist  primarily,  that  is  the  serial  order 
of  phenomena.  The  more  complex  sciences 
grow  out  of  the  simpler,  by  a  process  of  differ- 
entiation. The  filiation  of  the  sciences  is  of 
basic  importance  to  all  kindred  study.  "We 
not  only  discover  one  great  law  of  evolution 
applicable  to  all  the  fields  covered  by  the 
several  sciences  of  the  series,  but  we  can  learn 
something  more  about  the  true  method  of 
evolution  by  observing  how  it  takes  place  in 
each  of  these  fields."  The  aid  that  the 
higher  sciences  and  the  philosophy  of  science 
in  general  may  derive  from  some  of  the  more 
[153] 


Heater  Jf . 

special  fields  of  research,  may  be  shown  by 
illustration  from  the  field  of  botany.  Here  it 
may  be  seen  that  plant  development,  and  in- 
ferentially  animal  and  social  development 
also,  is  sympodial. 

The  law  of  evolution  in  current  conception  is 
monopodial  in  development  (the  stem  or  trunk 
giving  off  at  intervals  subordinate  branches). 
In  sympodial  branching  the  main  stem  or  trunk 
rises  to  a  certain  height  and  then  gives  off  a 
branch  into  which  the  majority  of  the  fibro- 
vascular  bundles  enter,  so  that  the  branch  vir- 
tually becomes  the  trunk,  and  the  real  trunk  or 
ascending  portion  is  reduced  to  a  mere  twig. 
(P.  S.,  p.  72.)1 

Each  successive  sympode  possesses  attributes 
which  enable  it  better  to  resist  the  environment, 
so  that  the  entire  process  is  one  of  true  evolution. 
When  we  compare  the  great  fallen  races  of  the 
globe  we  find  the  law  of  sympodial  development 
explaining  much  that  was  before  not  understood. 
The  human  races  are  as  so  many  trunks  or 
branches  upon  the  sociological  tree.  Ward's 
discovery  of  the  sympodial  law  brought  forth 
the  study  of  anthropologic  sympodes.  When 
we  concentrate  our  attention  upon  these  aspects 

'See  Glimpses  of  Cosmos,  No.  526,  p.  241. 
[154J 


3  personal 

we  find  a  most  remarkable  parallelism  between 
the  phenomena  which  we  popularly  character- 
ize as  the  rise  and  fall  of  nations  or  empires, 
and  the  rise  and  fall  of  the  great  types  of  life 
during  the  progress  of  geologic  history. 

Society  is  a  domain  of  law.  Human  events  are 
recognized  as  phenomena.  Careful  observation 
reveals  the  fact  that  all  social  phenomena  take 
place  in  accordance  with  laws.  The  fundamental 
law  of  everything  psychic,  especially  of  every- 
thing that  is  effected  by  intelligence  is  the  law  of 
parsimony:  The  greatest  gain  for  the  least  effort. 
It  is  one  of  the  most  important  laws  of  social 
Mechanics.  It  may  be  translated  into  the  terms : 
greatest  pleasure  for  least  pain. 

Ward  divided  the  essential  forces  of  Social 
Mechanics  into  Social  Statics  and  Social 
Dynamics.  Each  of  these  subdivided  into 
particular  laws. 

"The  method  in  sociology  is  generalization. 
It  is  essentially  the  process  of  grouping  pheno- 
mena, and  using  groups  as  units."  Thus  I 
have  inserted  Ward's  Charts  as  a  visible 
method  of  condensing  concisely  his  great 
scheme  of  thought.  He  thoroughly  believed 
that  the  treatment  of  any  science  may  be 
[1551 


Heater  Jf .  fllarb 

made  difficult  or  easy  in  proportion  as  a  clear, 
exact  method  is  used. 


SOCIOLOGY 


Social 


Mechanics 


J(  Social 
Integration 
Stattcs  1  Social 
I      Differentiation 

Synergy  (Chief  principle  of 
Social  Statics) 

Social  Dy 

'i.  Difference  of  P 
(Crossing  o 
2.  Innovation 
(Fortuitous 
3.  Conation 
(Transform 

namics 

otential 
Cultures) 

Variation) 
ing  the  envi 

I                                          2 

Creative                Sympodial 
Synthesis               Development 

Parsimony 
(Greatest  gain  by  least  effort) 

ment) 


Karyokinesis 

(Internal  organization:  assimila- 
tion) 

Structures  and  Functions 

Marriage 

Religion 

Law 

Political  Institutions 

Language 

Morals 


The  entire  scheme  of  the  mechanics  of 
Society  may  be  formulated  as  follows : 

Social  Mechanics,  treating  of  the  Social 
Forces. 

Social  Statics,  treating  of  Social  Order. 

Social     Dynamics,     treating     of     Social 
Progress. 

[156] 


Social  Genetics,  treating  of  Social  Genesis. 

Social  Telics,  treating  of  Social  Telesis. 

Individual  Telics,  treating  of  Individual 
Telesis. 

Collective  Telics,  treating  of  Collective 
Telesis. 

There  is  no  lack  of  power  for  propelling  the 
social  machinery,  as  social  energy  surges  through 
society  in  all  directions.  The  innate  interests  of 
men  work  at  cross  purposes;  they  conflict,  collide, 
and  dash  against  one  another,  but  in  such  an 
unorganized,  haphazard,  and  chaotic  way  that 
they  do  not  produce  equilibrium,  but  mutual 
ruin.  (P.  S.t  169.) 

The  general  social  problem,  then,  is  to 
restrain  and  control  by  scientific  means  social 
energy. 

The  simpler  manifestations  in  nature  at 
large  are,  first: 

The  principle  of  Synergy:  This  signifies 
the  organic  working  together  of  the  antitheti- 
cal forces  of  nature.  Synergy  is  a  synthesis 
of  work,  and  this  is  what  is  everywhere  taking 
place.  ' '  Synergy  is  the  principle  that  explains 
[157] 


Hester  $ , 

all  organization  and  creates  all  structures." 
Celestial  structures  are  worlds  and  world 
systems;  chemical  structures  are  atoms,  mole- 
cules, and  substances;  biotic  structures  are 
protoplasm,  cells,  tissues,  organs,  and  or- 
ganisms. There  are  also  psychic  structures — 
feelings,  emotions,  passions,  volitions,  per- 
ceptions, cognitions,  memory,  imagination, 
reason,  thought,  and  all  the  acts  of  conscious- 
ness. And  then  there  are  social  structures. 
Social  structures  are  the  product  of  social 
synergy.  They  are  human  institutions.  The 
constructive  process  inheres  in  all  forms  of 
synergy. 

Social  Karyokinesis  is  social  assimilation, 
the  conquering  race  of  the  conquered  race. 
A  people  is  a  synthetic  creation.  It  is  not  a 
mechanical  mixture.  There  is  no  cosmic 
product  in  which  the  detailed  operations  in- 
volved in  its  formation  are  as  plainly  to  be 
seen  and  traced  as  in  the  genesis  of  a  people. 

As  social  statics  has  t6  do  with  the  creation 
of  an  equilibrium  among  the  forces  of  human 
society,  so  social  dynamics  must  have  to  do 
[158] 


&  $  ergon  a  I 

with  some  manner  of  disturbance  in  the  social 
equilibrium. 

"In  all  departments  of  nature  where  the 
statical  condition  is  represented  by  structures, 
the  dynamic  condition  consists  in  some  change 
in  the  type  of  such  structures." 

As  Synergy  is  the  principle  that  underlies 
all  Social  Statics,  we  find  there  are  three 
leading  principles.  These  are,  difference  of 
potential,  innovation  and  conation.  Differ- 
ence of  potential  is  a  cosmic  principle  like 
synergy.  Its  operation  is  seen  in  the  crossing, 
or  cross  fertilization  of  cultures.  The  cross 
fertilization  of  cultures  in  sociology  is  what 
the  cross  fertilization  of  germs  is  to  biology. 
A  culture  is  a  social  structure,  a  social  or- 
ganism, and  ideas  are  its  germs.  The  process 
by  which  the  greater  part  of  "mingling  of 
cultures"  has  been  accomplished  is  the 
struggle  of  races.  In  this  struggle  may  be 
observed  this  principle  of  the  difference  of 
potential.  Progress  is  the  result. 

The  dynamic  principle  next  in  importance 
to  that  of  difference  of  potential  is  innovation; 
[159] 


Hesrter  Jf .  flfcrb 

in  its  broader  aspect  it  may  be  called  fortui- 
tous variation.  Social  innovation  may  be 
called  invention,  or  impulse.  Invention 
emphasizes  the  intellectual  side  and  impulse 
the  feeling  side.  Dynamic  action  is  progres- 
sive, and,  instead  of  leaving  the  world  in  the 
same  condition  as  before,  leaves  it  in  a 
changed,  i.e.,  in  an  improved  condition. 

The  third  dynamic  principle  is  Conation; 
or  the  modification  of  surroundings.  The 
effect  of  a  dynamic  action  is  to  transform  the 
environment.  In  biology  the  environment 
transforms  the  organism,  while  in  sociology 
man  transforms  the  environment.  The  one 
is  a  physiological  effect,  the  other  a  socio- 
logical effect. 

The  emotions  constitute  the  chief  stimuli  or 
social  forces,  and  when  we  consider  the 
volume  of  feeling  as  an  essential  striving,  we 
find  in  it  all  the  elements  of  the  will. 

The  social  forces  are  wants  seeking  satis- 
faction through  efforts.     They  reside  in  the 
individual,  but  become  social  through  inter- 
action, cooperation,  and  cumulative  effects. 
[160] 


The  social  forces  may  be  classified  as  the 
chart  below  depicts. 


SOCIAL  FORCES 

Ontogenetic  Forces:    ,  Positive,  attractive   (seeking  plea- 

Preservative  J  sure) 

I  Negative, protective  (avoiding  pain) 

Phylogenetic  Forces:   i  Direct,  sexual 

Reproductive  i  Indirect,  consanguineal 


a  o 


>.  c 


"  &  (  Moral:   seeking  the  safe  and  good 

fe  a  .                                I  Esthetic:  seeking  the  beautiful 

.--  a  Sociogenetic  Forces    < 

§.2  Intellectual:  seeking  the  useful  and 

.So  I      true 


The  Ontogenetic  or  Preservative  Forces 
may  be  called  the  forces  of  Individual  Pre- 
servation; the  Phylogenetic  or  the  Repro- 
ductive Forces  may  be  called  the  Forces  of 
Race  Continuance;  and  the  Sociogenetic 
Forces  as  a  whole  may  be  called  the  Forces 
of  Race  elevation. 

Fear  and  not  love  of  nature  is  the  charac- 
teristic of  primitive  peoples,  and  it  is  worthy 
of  remark,  Dr.  Ward  says,  that  the  attitude 
of  the  civilized  world  toward  the  social  forces 
is  analogous  to  the  attitude  of  the  savage 
ii  [161] 


Hester  Jf .  ISarfc 

toward  the  physical  forces.     All  know  that 
this  is  one  of  apprehension. 

Man  to-day  has  learned  to  avert  the 
dangers  of  the  physical  forces  and  even  to 
harness  and  utilize  them,  but  he  has  made 
very  little  progress  with  the  social  forces. 
He  looks  upon  the  passions  precisely  as  the 
savage  looks  upon  the  tornado.  Man  is  only 
civilized  in  relation  to  the  lower  and  simpler 
phenomena.  Toward  the  higher  and  more 
complex  phenomena  he  is  still  a  savage.  Just 
as  pestilences  were  formerly  looked  upon  as 
scourges  of  God,  so  the  so-called  evil  pro- 
pensities of  man,  which  are  nothing  but  mani- 
festations of  social  energy,  are  still  looked 
upon  as  necessary  inflictions  which  may  be 
preached  against  but  must  be  endured.  This 
difference  is  wholly  due  to  the  fact  that  while 
we  now  have  sciences  of  physics,  chemistry, 
geology,  and  bacteriology,  which  teach  the 
true  nature  of  storms,  electricity,  gases, 
earthquakes,  and  disease  germs,  we  have  no 
science  of  social  psychology  or  sociology  that 
teaches  the  true  nature  of  human  motives, 
[162] 


desires,  and  passions,  or  of  social  wants  and 
needs  and  the  psychic  energy  working  for 
their  satisfaction.  True  philosophers  should 
look  upon  the  social  forces  as  everybody 
looks  upon  the  physical  and  vital  forces,  and 
sees  in  them  powers  of  nature  now  doing 
injury,  or  at  least  running  to  waste,  that  may 
be  controlled  and  converted  into  servants  of 
man. 

Civilization  [Dr.  Ward  says]  consists  in  the 
utilization  of  the  materials  and  forces  of  nature, 
but  the  efficiency  of  the  human  race  depends 
absolutely  upon  food,  clothing,  shelter,  fuel, 
leisure,  and  liberty. 

The  Ontogenetic  Forces  have  subsistence 
for  their  end.  They  may  be  summed  up  in 
the  word  hunger,  and  they  are  preservative. 

The  primitive  group  or  horde  is  the  result- 
ant social  structure.  Thus  far  the  competi- 
tion is  with  one  another  and  with  the  environ- 
ment, but  when  the  time  arrives  for  social 
integration  to  begin,  the  competition  is  one 
of  group  with  group  and  wholly  new  elements 
enter  into  the  struggle. 
[163] 


Hester  Jf .  fllarb 

Exploitation,  slavery,  labor,  property,  agri- 
culture, production  of  raw  materials,  all  fall 
under  the  ontogenetic  law. 

All  beings  which  perform  actions  do  so  in 
obedience  to  desires;  thus  the  basis  of  all 
action  is  desire.  This  is  the  true  force  of  the 
sentient  world.  The  Ontogenetic  forces  are 
forever  seeking  pleasure,  and  avoiding  pain. 

The  object  of  nature  may  be  said  to  be  the 
preservation  and  perpetuation  of  life;  that 
of  man  is  the  satisfaction  of  desire.  The 
former  is  objective,  and  constitutes  a  biologic 
process;  the  latter  is  subjective,  and  is  a 
moral  or  sociologic  process.  Properly  under- 
stood, these  processes  possess  no  natural  or 
necessary  relation  to  each  other.  The  agree- 
ableness  of  the  acts  of  nutrition  and  reproduc- 
tion exists  because  without  it  nutrition  and 
reproduction  could  never  have  been  secured. 

The  Phylogenetic  Forces  are  the  reproduc- 
tive ones,  summed  up  in  the  word  love,  and 
the  direct  or  sexual,  which  is  the  dominant 
power  of  this  force,  is  the  earliest,  strongest 
and  creative  in  its  primitive  forms.  As 
[164] 


&  $3cre(onal 

society  develops  there  arise  derivative  pro- 
ducts, thus  indirect,  of  the  reproductive 
forces.  These  are  of  various  kinds  and 
degrees.  The  sexual  desire  itself  becomes 
wonderfully  expanded  in  its  relations,  and 
comes,  in  civilized  races,  to  embrace  all  the 
manifold  phases  of  love  and  romantic  senti- 
ment, than  which  no  more  powerful  forces 
exist  in  society. 

The  Preservative  Forces  are,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  social  progress,  greater,  more  obvious 
more  varied,  and  more  comprehensive  than  those 
attending  the  operations  of  the  Reproductive 
Forces.  The  former  underlie  all  the  great  indus- 
trial, economic,  and  acquisitional  movements  of 
society.  It  is  to  them  that  must  be  attributed  all 
the  progressive  institutions,  all  the  wealth,  all 
the  invention,  all  the  civilization  of  the  world. 
The  latter,  on  the  other  hand,  while  they  call 
forth  the  most  intense  activities,  do  not  direct 
them  toward  the  production  of  wealth  or  the 
advancement  of  thought.  Their  influence  is 
internal,  rather  than  external,  molding  rather 
than  creative.  The  normal  effect  of  the  former  is 
to  organize  human  happiness,  and  carry  it  up 
into  higher  and  higher  spheres,  furnishing  new 
and  more  complex  objects  for  the  gratification 
[1651 


Hesrter  $. 

of  new  and  more  delicate  faculties;  the  normal 
effect  of  the  latter  is  to  throw  over  society  a 
softening  and  refining  charm,  without  which  all 
other  forms  of  enjoyment  would  be  insipid. 
The  one  deals  with  the  hard  and  practical  side  of 
life,  and  its  history  is  characterized  by  bold  and 
positive  inroads  upon  nature;  the  other  though 
not  without  its  asperities,  is  chiefly  character- 
ized by  a  conservative  shyness  before  innovation 
and  an  indifference  to  progress.  "The  story  of 
the  forces  of  preservation  is  an  epic;  that  of  the 
forces  of  perpetuation  is  a  lyric."  (Dynamic 
Sociology,  Vol.  I,  pp.  598-599.) 

Dr.  Ward  discussed  two  theories  in  regard 
to  the  facts  that  lie  on  the  surface  of  the 
highly  artificial  and  conventional  society  of 
to-day.  The  relations  between  the  sexes  are 
accounted  for  either  through  the  andro- 
centric theory,  or  through  the  gyncecocentric 
theory. 

The  androcentric  theory  is  the  view  that 
the  male  sex  is  primary  and  the  female 
secondary  in  the  organic  scheme;  that  all 
things  center,  as  it  were,  about  the  male,  and 
that  though  the  female  is  necessary  in  carry- 
ing out  the  scheme,  she  is  only  the  means  of 
[166] 


3  personal  g>feetcf) 

continuing  the  life  of  the  globe,  an  incidental 
factor  in  the  general  result. 

The  gynaecocentric  theory  is  the  view  that 
the  female  sex  is  primary  and  the  male 
secondary  in  the  organic  scheme,  that  ori- 
ginally all  things  centered,  as  it  were,  about 
the  female,  and  that  the  male,  though  not 
necessary  in  carrying  out  the  scheme,  was 
developed  under  the  operation  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  advantage  to  secure  organic  progress 
through  the  crossing  of  strains. 

Dr.  Ward  said  that  the  prevalence  of  the 
androcentric  theory  was  due  to  the  "illusion 
of  the  near"  and  to  tradition,  convention  and 
prejudice.  It  so  happens  that  while  the  facts 
depended  upon  to  support  the  androcentric 
theory  are  patent  to  all,  those  that  support 
the  gynsecocentric  theory  are  latent  and 
known  to  few. 

In  Pure  Sociology  we  find  a  particularly 
full  statement  of  the  gynsecocentric  theory. 
It  is  one  of  the  most  detailed  treatments  to 
be  found  in  Ward's  writings. 

The  Gynsecocracy  theory  was  new,  and 
[167] 


Hester  Jf . 

as  Ward  says  in  Pure  Sociology  (p.  297), 
"perhaps  somewhat  startling."  To  the 
Forum,  Vol.  VI,  November,  1888,  he  con- 
tributed an  article  entitled  "Our  Better 
Halves."  That  article  constituted  the  first 
authorized  statement  of  the  gynsecocentric 
theory  that  was  published.  In  his  first  presi- 
dential address  before  the  Biological  Society 
of  Washington,  he  alludes  to  it  again. 

The  Sociogenetic  Forces  are  the  sociolizing 
and  civilizing  impulses  of  mankind. 

Morality  considered  from  the  standpoint 
of  its  origin  is  of  two  kinds:  race  morality 
and  individual  morality.  The  roots  of  both 
of  these  classes  penetrate  very  deeply;  both 
kinds  were  the  products  of  the  rational 
faculty. 

The  Biological  Imperative  and  the  Social 
Imperative  are  forever  having  a  conflict  in  the 
expression  of  their  powers  in  society,  but  on 
going  into  the  influences  of  these  forces,  we 
find  both  the  race  and  the  individual  march- 
ing onwards  in  their  natural  development. 
[168] 


&  ^personal 

The  ./Esthetic  Forces  have  passed  through 
three  stages:  the  receptive,  the  imaginative 
and  the  creative.  Art  is  a  socializing  agency. 
It  is  a  typical  sociogenetic  force.  It  finally 
becomes  a  spiritual  necessity.  The  very 
word  (Esthetic  means  feeling.  The  enjoyment 
of  life  consists  in  satisfying  feelings. 

The  Intellectual  Forces  may  be  grouped 
into  three  chief  interests:  (1)  to  acquire 
knowledge;  (2)  to  discover  truth;  (3)  to  im- 
part information. 

The  constructive  quality  of  the  intellect  is 
the  most  important  of  all  the  faculties,  and 
probably  is  the  one  that  has  achieved  the 
most,  and  contributed  the  largest  additions 
to  the  general  fact  which  is  commonly  under- 
stood as  civilization. 

The  Intellectual  forces  constitute  the  latest 
manifestation  of  the  dynamic  agent. 

After  contemplating  deeply  and  writing 
carefully  of  the  great  forces  which  he  believed 
were  to  be  studied  in  the  laboratory  of  human 
achievement,  he  writes  first  of  The  Sociologi- 
cal Perspective,  and  then  of  Action  in  that 
[169] 


ILt&ttt  $. 

social  achievement.  Social  evolution  is  only 
a  continuation  of  organic  evolution,  and  there 
is  quite  as  much  proof  of  the  former  as  of  the 
latter. 

If  humanity  as  a  whole  is  ever  to  eliminate 
the  ignorance  and  evils  of  life  and  accelerate 
the  movement  of  social  progress,  it  must  be 
through  the  intellect  of  man,  the  directive 
agent,  which  guides  and  directs  the  dynamic 
agent  centered  in  the  feelings. 

The  social  forces  are  natural  forces  and 
obey  mechanical  laws.  They  are  blind  im- 
pulses. This  is  as  true  of  the  spiritual  as  of 
the  physical  forces. 

The  restraint  and  control  of  social  energy 
is  therefore  the  only  condition  to  social  evolu- 
tion. All  true  forces  are  in  themselves  essen- 
tially centrifugal  and  destructive.  There 
are  two  ways  of  controlling  social  energy, 
one  an  unconscious  process,  or  the  genetic 
method — social  genesis;  the  other  the  telic 
or  directive  method. 

The  social  forces  left  to  themselves  blindly 
impel  or  propel  mankind,  and  the  world 
[170] 


drifts  as  aimlessly  as  an  iceberg.  The  mis- 
sion of  the  directive  agent  is  to  guide 
society  through  no  matter  how  tortuous 
a  channel  to  the  safe  harbor  of  social 
prosperity. 

The  directive  agent  is  a  final  cause.  It  is 
not  a  force — yet  it  has  immense  influence. 
Genetic  phenomena  are  produced  by  efficient 
causes  only.  The  final  cause  consists  essen- 
tially in  the  knowledge  by  the  telic  agent  of 
the  nature  of  the  natural  force  and  the  rela- 
tions subsisting  between  the  subject,  the 
object,  the  force,  and  the  end.  Final  causes 
command  or  utilize  efficient  causes;  or  the  forces 
of  nature.  Civilization  chiefly  consists  in  the 
exercise  of  the  telic  faculty.  If  we  regard  all 
the  forces  of  nature,  including  the  social 
forces,  as  so  many  means  to  the  ends  of  man 
and  society,  telesis  becomes  the  adjustment 
of  means  to  ends,  and  all  human  effort  is 
expended  upon  the  means. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  telic  progress,  or 
telesis,  individual  and  collective.  The  former 
is  the  principal  kind  thus  far  employed. 
[171] 


Hester  $ .  2Harfc 

Society  itself  must  be  looked  upon  as  being 
mainly  unconscious. 

To  the  sociologist  and  philosopher  like 
Lester  Ward,  the  problem  is  how  to  mini- 
mize the  amount  of  suffering  and  enlarge, 
magnify,  the  volume  of  life:  how  to  accelerate 
social  evolution. 

Man  has  been  looked  upon  as  a  product  of 
nature  and  as  having  developed  like  other 
products.  Society  has  been  contemplated 
as  an  evolution.  All  this  belongs  to  genetic 
progress  or  evolution  proper.  Lester  Ward 
was  the  only  one  who  has  attempted  to  show 
from  a  biologic,  or  psychologic  standpoint, 
that  in  restricting  social  progress  to  these 
passive  influences,  an  important  factor  is 
left  out  of  view.  This  factor  he  maintains, 
is  a  subjective  one  not  found  at  any  lower 
stage  of  development,  and  exclusively  char- 
acterizing human  or  social  progress.  It  was 
chiefly  to  emphasize  this  factor  that  he  wrote 
Dynamic  Sociology.  The  second  volume  was 
devoted  to  this  task.  Later  in  order  to  eluci- 
date more  fully  the  subject  he  devoted  an 
[172] 


entire  book  to  it — Psychic  Factors  of  Civiliza- 
tion, which  appeared  in  1893. 

To  review  the  entire  philosophy  of  mind 
and  join  this  to  that  of  society,  was  a  giant's 
task.    Many  men  consider  this  book  as  the  » 
greatest  work  on  psychology  of  the  century. 
The  original  and  forceful  ideas  on  the  Econ-  v 
omy  of  Nature  and  Mind  brought  forth  in 
Chapter  XXXIII,  cover  a  field  never  before 
thus  reviewed  by  man. 

The  whole  difference  between  civilization 
and  other  forms  of  natural  progress  is  that 
it  is  a  product  of  art.  Art  is  the  natural 
product  of  the  inventive  faculty  which  is 
only  a  form  of  intuitive  perception  or  intui- 
tive reason,  and  belongs  to  the  main  trunk  of 
intellect.  The  artificial  is  infinitely  superior 
to  the  natural.  Social  science  is  the  only 
science  that  can  teach  the  art  of  becoming 
truly  civilized.  The  mental  and  social  state 
to  which  social  science  points  is  neither  optim- 
ism nor  pessimism,  but  a  firmer,  clearer,  more 
scientific  way  for  the  betterment  of  society 
is  shown  by  Dr.  Ward's  Meliorism.  Both 
[1731 


Hester  $ .  8fflarb 

optimism  and  pessimism  are  passive  states 
of  mind.  The  true  state  is  an  active  one. 
Both  optimism  and  pessimism  assume  nature 
to  be  in  an  active  state  toward  man;  the  true 
attitude  makes  nature  passive  and  man 
active.  Meliorism  is  a  dynamical  principle. 
It  implies  the  improvement  of  the  social 
condition  through  cold  calculation,  through 
the  adoption  of  indirect  means. 

The  world  has  passed  through  stages  of  auto- 
cracy and  aristocracy  into  the  stages  of  de- 
mocracy and  plutocracy.  Each  of  these  stages 
represented  in  more  or  less  degree  is  stamped 
upon  the  earth  today,  and  there  is  a  natural  re- 
action against  them  all.  How  can  society  escape 
the  "individual  reign?"  What  is  the  remedy? 
There  is  one  power  and  only  one  that  is  greater 
than  that  which  now  rules  society.  That  power 
is  society  itself.  There  is  one  form  of  govern- 
ment that  is  stronger  than  autocracy  or  aristo- 
cracy or  democracy,  or  even  plutocracy,  and 
that  is  sociocracy.  The  individual  has  reigned 
long  enough.  The  day  has  come  for  society  to 
take  its  affairs  into  its  own  hands  and  shape  its 
own  destinies.  The  individual  has  acted  as  best 
he  could.  He  has  acted  in  the  only  way  he  could. 
With  a  consciousness,  will  and  intellect  of  his 
[174] 


&  personal 

own  he  could  do  nothing  else  than  pursue  his 
natural  ends.  He  should  not  be  denounced  nor 
called  names.  He  should  not  even  be  blamed. 
(Psychic  Factors  of  Civilization,  p.  323.) 

Sociocracy  differs  from  all  other  forms  of 
government  yet  devised,  and  still  no  revolu- 
tion will  be  required  to  reach  it  in  the  course 
of  natural  evolution.  Just  as  absolute  mon- 
archy passed  imperceptibly  into  limited 
monarchy,  and  in  many  states,  without  even 
an  outward  change  of  name,  has  passed  into 
democracy,  so  is  democracy  capable  of  pass- 
ing as  smoothly  into  sociocracy. 

Collective  telesis  is  the  social  need  in  the 
machinery  of  Sociocracy. 

This  general  social  art,  the  scientific  control 
of  the  social  forces  by  the  collective  mind  of 
society  for  its  advantage,  in  strict  homology 
with  the  practical  arts  of  the  industrial  world, 
is  Sociocracy. 

Sociocracy  is  not  even  to  be  confounded 
with  socialism;  or  with  competitive  indi- 
vidualism. A  few  antithetical  propositions 
which  Ward  placed  at  the  end  of  his 
[175] 


Hester  Jf . 

book,  Outlines  of  Sociology,    are   clear   and 
concise: 

1.  Individualism   has   created   artificial   in- 
equalities. 

2.  Socialism  seeks  to  create  artificial  equali- 
ties. 

3.  Sociocracy  recognizes  natural  inequalities 
and  aims  to  abolish  artificial  inequalities. 

4.  Individualism   confers   benefits   on  those 
only  who  have  the  ability  to  obtain  them,  by 
superior   power,    cunning,    intelligence,    or   the 
accident  of  position. 

5.  Socialism  would  confer  the  same  benefits 
on  all  alike,   and   aims  to   secure  equality  of 
fruition. 

6.  Sociocracy  would  confer  benefits  in  strict 
proportion  to  merit,  but  insists  upon  equality  of 
opportunity  as  the  only   means  of  determining 
the  degree  of  merit. 

A  cycle  is  thus  completed.  Sociocracy  is  a 
return  to  nature  from  which  society  has 
departed.  Individualism  was  the  original 
and  natural  method  recognizing  natural 
inequalities  and  apportioning  benefits  accord- 
ing to  natural  ability.  Individual  telesis 
has  completely  abolished  this  method.  Social- 
[176] 


ism  recognizes  this,  and  would  remedy  it  by 
an  equally  wide  departure  from  the  natural. 
Collective  telesis  can  alone  remove  the 
artificial  barriers  raised  by  individual  telesis 
and  place  society  once  more  in  the  free  cur- 
rent of  natural  law. 

In  the  "Personal  Remark"  included  in 
Glimpses  of  the  Cosmos,  Ward  mentions 
principles  and  names,  contributions  he  be- 
lieved he  had  made  to  human  thought. 
"  These  contributions, "  he  says,  "  are  of  many 
kinds." 

The  growth  of  the  idea  in  my  mind  may  thus 
be  traced. 

1.  Synergy;    the    constructive    principle    of 
nature. 

2.  Creation    in    general,    including    recom- 
pounding. 

3.  Creative    synthesis.      Wundt's    idea    ex- 
panded by  me. 

4.  The  nisus  of  nature  or  universal  creative 
energy. 

5.  The  continuity  of  nature  resulting  in  the 
ascending  series  of  synthetic  creations. 

6.  The  natural  storage  of  energy. 

7.  Sympodial  development. 
i2  [177] 


Heater  Jf .  Marti 

8.  The  nature  of  motility,  or  transition  from 
molecular  to  molar  activity. 

9.  The  maintenance  of  a  difference  of  po- 
tential. 

10.  Fortuitous  variation. 

11.  The  natural  origin  of  mind,  both  of  feel- 
ing and  of  intellect. 

12.  Telesis,  or  anthropoteleology. 

13.  Innovation  as  a  dynamic  principle. 

14.  Conation,  especially  in  society. 

15.  The  biological  imperative. 

16.  Gynsecocracy,  or  the  priority  and  superi- 
ority of  the  female  sex  throughout  nature. 

17.  The  group  sentiment  of  safety,  or  pri- 
mordial social  plasm. 

18.  The  elimination  of  the  wayward,  as  the 
essential  function  of  religion. 

This  list,  of  course,  could  be  greatly  extended. 
Many  of  these  laws,  principles,  and  truths  are 
very  broad  and  embrace  subordinate  ones  that 
might  be  treated  independently.  Some  are 
closely  related  to  others  and  run  together,  for 
such  is  the  nature  of  all  truth.  But  as  they 
stand  here  they  constitute  the  essential  elements 
of  a  great  cosmic  philosophy,  which  is  as  nearly 
new  as  anything  can  be  in  the  domain  of  human 
thought. 

Perhaps  no  words  of  Dr.  Ward's  can  so 
wisely  express  his  broad  and  deep  feelings 
[178] 


8  personal 

embracing  human  society  and  his  desire  to 
have  the  entire  "swarming  and  spawning 
millions"  benefited  rightly,  as  the  final 
lines  of  the  last  lecture  he  ever  delivered. 
One  may  find  the  words  in  Glimpses  of  the 
Cosmos,  Vol.  VI,  p.  397: 

The  education  and  preservation  of  the  select 
few  of  the  higher  classes,  of  the  emerged  hun- 
dredth, to  the  neglect  of  the  submerged  tenth 
and  the  rest  of  the  ninety-nine  hundredths  of 
society,  covers  too  small  a  field.  I  cannot  bring 
myself  to  work  contentedly  in  a  field  so  narrow, 
however  fascinating  in  itself.  Perhaps  mine  is  a 
"  vaulting  ambition,"  but  I  want  a  field  that  shall 
be  broad  enough  to  embrace  the  whole  human 
race. 

For  an  indefinite  period  yet  to  come  society 
will  continue  to  be  recruited  from  the  base. 
The  swarming  and  spawning  millions  of  the  lower 
ranks  will  continue  in  the  future  as  in  the  past 
to  swamp  all  the  fruits  of  intelligence  and  com- 
pel society  to  assimilate  this  mass  of  crude 
material  as  best  it  can. 

This  is  commonly  looked  upon  as  the  deplor- 
able consequence  of  the  demographic  law  referred 
to,  and  it  is  said  that  society  is  doomed  to  hope- 
less degeneracy.  Is  it  possible  to  take  any  other 
[179J 


Hester  Jf . 


view?  I  think  it  is,  and  the  only  consolation, 
the  only  hope,  lies  in  the  truth  that,  so  far  as 
the  native  capacity,  the  potential  quality,  the 
"promise  and  potency"  of  a  higher  life  are  con- 
cerned, those  swarming,  spawning  millions,  the 
bottom  layer  of  society,  the  proletariat,  the 
working  classes,  the  "hewers  of  wood  and  draw- 
ers of  water,"  nay,  even  the  denizens  of  the 
slums — that  all  these  are  by  nature  the  peers  of 
the  boasted  "aristocracy  of  brains"  that  now 
dominates  society  and  looks  down  upon  them, 
and  the  equals  in  all  but  privilege  of  the  most 
enlightened  teachers  of  eugenics. 


[180] 


CHAPTER  VI 

CONTINUITY 


[181] 


CHAPTER  VI 

CONTINUITY 

IN  1911,  on  August  17th,  Lester  F.  Ward 
wrote  a  few  words  to  suggest  the  opening 
thought  for  a  final  volume  he  had  expected 
to  write,  to  complete  his  System  of  Philoso- 
phy: 

Heights  and  Depths  are  One 

He  had  for  a  long  time  contemplated  the  idea 
of  humanity  and  religion.  He  recognized 
the  need  of  the  human  mind  for  some  sort  of 
religion,  and  claimed  that  scientific  thought 
in  its  highest  meaning  and  expression  is  not 
cold  and  materialistic,  but  unites  all  human 
creatures  instead  of  dividing  them,  as  they 
are  divided  in  the  many  sects  of  to-day.  He 
began  the  notes  for  this  volume  on  Con- 
[183] 


Hesrter  Jf . 

tinuity  on  his  last  trip  to  Europe  in  1911,  and 
gave  them  to  me  when  he  returned.  Before 
sailing  on  the  S.S.  Helig  Olaf,  I  gave  him  a 
little  red  leather  covered  blank  book,  saying : 
"When  you  are  alone  on  the  ship,  or  when 
traveling  on  the  Continent,  do  not  let  any 
of  your  fine  thoughts  drift  away  from  you. 
Put  them  in  this  little  book,  it  will  just  fit  in 
your  pocket."  He  laughed  and  remarked: 
"What  shall  I  write?  So  many  thoughts 
come  and  go?"  I  then  suggested  that  he 
write  the  ideas  which  came  when  contem- 
plating his  fast  evolving  book  on  Continuity. 
The  development  of  the  race  through  the 
many  and  various  fetiches,  superstitions, 
creeds,  sects,  dogmas,  etc.,  were  to  him  but 
indices  of  the  step  in  evolution  to  which  a 
race  or  even  an  individual  has  evolved.  He 
believed  with  Lecky,  that  as  clerical  influence 
strengthens,  civilization  proportionally  de- 
clines, and  vice  versa.  Critical  historical 
investigation  will  confirm  this  statement. 
As  learning  was  restored  in  Europe  there 
came  the  dawn  of  free  thought.  The  history 
[184] 


&  personal 

of  the  growth  of  European  civilization  is  the 
history  of  the  certain  decline  of  the  power  of 
the  Church. 

In  the  essay  entitled  The  Essential  Nature 
of  Religion  which  Ward  wrote  in  1898  (see 
Glimpses  of  the  Cosmos,  Vol.  VI,  p.  9)  he 
gives  a  profound  and  scholarly  outlook  into 
the  basic  ideas  underlying  religion. 

He  believed  in  the  essential  nature  of  a 
religious  instinct;  of  "a  faith"  for  humanity, 
and  as  the  old  creeds  and  dogmas  pass  into 
gradual  oblivion  through  the  deeper  compre- 
hension of  Nature's  laws,  and  Science  leading 
the  way  to  a  nobler,  a  finer,  grander,  freer 
expression  of  human  relationships,  Man  will 
feel  the  beauty  and  truth  of  the  great  law  of 
Continuity. 

On  August  23,  1911,  Ward  wrote:  "Mon- 
ism. The  true  monism  is  the  absolute 
continuity  of  nature.  Its  broadest  law  is 
evolution,  which  goes  on  in  all  departments." 

Worlds,  atoms,  substances,  organisms, 
men,  societies,  all  are  evolved.  The  process 
of  evolution  is  organization.  There  is  cosmic 
[185] 


Hester  Jf . 

organization,  chemical  organization,  biotic 
organization,  psychic  organization,  and  social 
organization.  The  process  is  the  same  in  all. 
The  principles  of  evolution  are  those  that 
produce  the  formation  and  the  organization  of 
the  products  of  evolution.  The  principles 
that  produce  the  formation  of  the  products  of 
evolution  are: 

(1)  Synergy;  (2)  Creative  Synthesis;  (3) 
Sympodial  Dichotomy. 

On  August  24th,  he  added : 

All  the  phenomena  of  all  the  sciences  conform  to 
one  law — Evolution — are  the  result  of  one  pro- 
cess— Organization.  This  is  true  monism  and 
represents  absolute  continuity  in  nature. 

And  then  continued: 

The  last  and  latest  product  is  Society,  which 
is  the  subject  of  the  highest  science  which  is 
Sociology,  all  the  laws  and  principles  of  which  are 
at  work  also  in  all  the  sciences  below  it. 

Then  on  September  16,  1911,  4  A.M.,  he 
writes: 

I  reflect  constantly  on  the  title  of  my  next 
book,   and  have  this   morning  arrived  at  the 
[186] 


&  personal 

following  as  the  most  satisfactory  thus  far: 
Monism,  the  true  Quietism,  or,  The  Continuity 
of  Nature  as  the  Only  Faith  that  can  Satisfy  the 
Emancipated  Soul. 

September  21st. 

Attended  a  meeting  in  Freiburg  of  the  Inter- 
nationale Order  of  Ethischen  Cultur  and  heard 
a  paper  on  Jesuitical  Monism.  A  large  work  by 
Klimke,  S.  J.  was  passed  round.  It  bears  the 
title  monism,  was  said  not  to  be  an  attack  on  it 
but  a  Jesuitical  interpretation  of  it.  The  paper 
read  showed  that  all  kinds  of  people  are  taking 
up  the  word  and  making  it  conform  to  their  views. 
If  such  is  the  case  I  would  rather  not  use  it  in 
my  book. 

On  his  return  from  Europe  he  remarked 
one  day  in  conversation  that  the  universal 
comprehension  of  Nature,  a  knowledge  of  the 
never  ceasing,  immutable,  continuous  laws 
of  the  cosmos,  would  give  to  mankind  a 
keener  appreciation  of  an  evolving  universe 
in  which  every  human  could  do  his  part  than 
anything  else  could.  To  be  aware  of  the  fact 
that  no  one  ever  was  utterly  independent; 
that  the  very  generation  of  which  one  is  a 
[187] 


Hester  Jf . 

part  has  inherited  the  experiences  and 
knowledge  of  the  long  line  of  ancestors  in  the 
ages  of  the  past,  should  inspire  one  to  add  to 
the  whole,  to  give  one's  best  personal  service 
in  order  to  contribute  one's  share  to  life's 
great  continuous  flow.  It  was  this  thought 
that  caused  him  to  choose  as  the  title  of  the 
book  he  had  hoped  to  write  the  word  "Con- 
tinuity." 

The  thought  of  Unity,  of  Oneness,  the 
calmness  which  the  contemplation  of  the 
cosmos,  forever  evolving,  eternally  changing, 
the  infinite,  without  beginning  and  without 
end,  was  urging  itself  upon  him  so  that  the 
"beauty  of  faith,"  would  give  to  all  who  had 
finished  with  unscientific  theology  the  "sweet 
peace  of  a  scientific  outlook, "  a  religion  that 
was  satisfactory  to  an  emancipated  soul;  a 
scientific  demonstrable  religion,  or  faith  in 
Continuity.  It  was  the  being  able  to  lose  all 
personal  life,  all  the  little  self  in  the  compre- 
hension of  the  immortality  of  achievement,  of 
the  being  a  part  of  the  great  Cosmos,  that 
fed  the  desire  to  express  the  ever-present 
[188] 


3  personal  g>fectctj 

thought  of  continuity  in  his  last  philosophical 
inspirations. 

To  have  this  comprehension  of  Continuity 
become  a  more  general  and  broader  accepted 
fact  over  the  world  he  repeated  in  different 
forms  and  under  different  titles  the  same 
thought  of  education  and  yet  more  education 
of  the  laws  of  nature.  When  he  was  in 
Europe  in  1909  he  delivered  an  address  in 
Oxford,  at  Ruskin  College  (see  Glimpses  of 
the  Cosmos,  Vol.  VI,  p.  330),  entitled: 
Education  and  Progress.  It  was  before  work- 
ing classes  and  he  says : 

They  catechized  me  sharply  and  I  was  surprised 
at  the  kind  of  questions  they  asked.  They  were 
not  about  any  personal  matters,  hours  of  labor, 
wages,  etc.,  but  about  the  constitution  of  the 
universe,  the  origin  of  the  solar  system,  of  the 
earth,  of  life  on  the  globe,  and  of  the  human  race. 
Such  are  the  questions  that  present  themselves 
to  the  laboring  classes  as  soon  as  they  begin  to 
receive  a  little  real  education. 

Then  again  when  in  Europe  in  1911,  and 
speaking  of  what  education  can  do  he  writes: 
[189] 


tester 


The  immense  difference  and  wide  contrast 
between  the  Italian  people  and  the  people  of 
Switzerland  struck  me  forcibly  in  1909  when  I 
traveled  from  Naples  to  Geneva  and  Bern.  It 
is  not  less  striking  this  year  in  traveling  from 
Norway,  Germany,  and  Switzerland  through 
Italy.  In  the  other  countries,  also  largely  in 
England  and  France,  there  is  thrift,  independ- 
ence and  cleanliness.  In  Italy  there  is  a  general 
aspect  of  poverty,  dependence,  and  untidiness. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  cholera  in  Italy  is 
due  to  this  uncleanness  of  the  lower  classes. 
Everything  looks  rough  and  unclean.  There  is 
a  general  air  of  misery,  and  the  swarms  of  mendi- 
cants and  low  venders  are  unknown  in  other 
countries.  These  are  the  facts.  What  is  the 
cause?  Hereditarians  attribute  it  to  difference 
of  race  and  natural  characteristics.  Lombroso 
was  the  representative  of  this  doctrine.  Nature 
does  it  all.  The  people  of  Italy  are  natural 
beggars  and  thieves.  Italian  sociologists  are  all 
criminologists.  The  prevalence  of  crime  in  Italy 
keeps  that  aspect  of  the  science  in  the  foreground 
and  excludes  all  else. 

In  direct  opposition  to  the  hereditarian  view, 
I  hold  that  the  above  mentioned  contrast  is  due 
entirely  to  the  artificial  causes.  I  mean  that  the 
institutions  of  the  northern  countries  are  the 
cause  of  their  thrift  and  independence.  But 
primarily  it  is  the  general  state  of  public  instruc- 
[190] 


tion  that  produces  the  effect.  It  is  the  neglect  of 
public  instruction  in  Italy  that  keeps  it  in  pov- 
erty and  wretchedness,  as  well  as  in  squalor, 
filth  and  disease.  The  Italians  are  naturally 
bright.  Even  the  beggars  are  keen  judges  of 
human  nature.  The  thieves  and  other  criminals 
are  smart  and  acute  in  their  minds.  All  any  of 
these  classes  and  the  common  people  of  Italy 
need  is  to  be  educated.  Education  would  trans- 
form them  from  beggars,  criminals,  and  de- 
graded wretches  into  intelligent,  honest,  thrifty, 
clean,  and  healthy  citizens.  Of  this  I  am  per- 
fectly certain.  But  notwithstanding  Mazzini's 
warning  and  advice,  in  the  matter  of  education 
it  seems  to  be  almost  wholly  neglected  in  Italy, 
which  is  more  like  Spain,  and  Russia  than  like 
enlightened  nations. 


In  a  conversation  afterwards  was  men- 
tioned the  necessary  natural  observation 
that  all  Catholic  countries  like  Spain,  Italy, 
Ireland  were  the  most  backward  in  the 
awakening  of  their  people  to  scientific  facts; 
of  course  this  proved  the  lack  of  true  educa- 
tion for  the  masses. 

In  Dynamic  Sociology,  Vol.  I,  page  299,  we 
find  these  words: 

F1911 


Hester  JF. 

There  are  no  breaks  in  the  processes  of  nature, 
and  the  aim  of  all  true  philosophy  is  to  establish 
the  continuity  which  the  philosopher  is  confident 
must  exist  throughout  all  its  departments. 

Perhaps  during  the  whole  career  of  Lester 
F.  Ward  there  was  no  thought  deeper,  or  no 
desire  stronger  than  to  awaken  humanity 
to  the  necessary  idea  that  education  is  the 
basic  necessity  for  progress. 

In  the  words  of  Dynamic  Sociology  (Vol. 
II,  p.  632): 

The  problem  of  education  is,  therefore,  reduced 
to  this;  whether  the  members  of  society  shall 
continue  to  pass  through  life  surrounded  only  by 
the  natural  and  unorganized  influences  which 
everywhere  exist,  by  which  they  are  indeed  con- 
stantly acquiring  knowledge,  such  as  it  is,  and 
many  conceptions  which  are  not  knowledge 
because  they  consist  of  erroneous  inferences; 
whether  they  shall  thus  be  left  to  form  all  kinds 
of  undigested  and  unsystematized  ideas,  half  of 
which  are  objectively  unreal,  and  most  of  the 
remainder  too  narrow  to  be  of  any  value,  yet  to 
which  their  conduct  will  rigidly  correspond, 
producing  its  legitimate  effect  upon  themselves 
and  upon  society;  or,  whether  they  shall  be 
[192] 


&  personal 

required  to  pass  a  portion  of  their  early  lives 
under  a  system  of  artificial  circumstances,  so 
regulated  that  the  bulk  of  the  influences  which 
appeal  to  the  senses  and  produce  ideas  will  be 
both  reliable  and  important,  and  from  which, 
under  no  other  than  the  normal  operations  of  the 
mind,  reliable  and  valuable  knowledge  must 
necessarily  result,  solid  character  be  formed,  and 
the  highest  ethical  and  dynamic  actions  be  in- 
duced, exerting  rigidly  corresponding  effects 
upon  themselves  and  upon  society.  It  is,  in 
short,  the  question  whether  the  social  system 
shall  always  be  left  to  nature,  always  be  genetic 
and  spontaneous,  and  be  allowed  to  drift  list- 
lessly on,  intrusted  to  the  by  no  means  always 
progressive  influences  which  have  developed  it 
and  brought  it  to  its  present  condition,  or  whe- 
ther it  shall  be  regarded  as  a  proper  subject  of 
art,  treated  as  other  natural  products  have  been 
treated  by  human  intelligence,  and  made  as 
much  superior  to  nature,  in  this  only  proper 
sense  of  the  word,  as  other  artificial  productions 
are  superior  to  natural  ones. 

Education  finally  would  bring  to  the  de- 
velopment of  each  human  being  a  knowledge 
of  the  reality  of  Continuity  in  Nature.  It 
was  this  power  of  being  able  to  forget  oneself, 
and  to  become  conscious  of  all  that  which 
13  [193] 


Jf . 

makes  for  achievement  for  humanity,  that 
Dr.  Ward  kept  strongly  in  his  thought  during 
the  contemplation  of  his  book  he  expected  to 
complete. 

No  one  who  ever  came  into  close  contact 
with  him  failed  to  see  that  he  was  a  man  of 
noblest  human  type.  In  intellectual  stature 
he  was  a  giant,  and  in  love  of  truth  and 
loyalty  to  convictions  he  was  unfaltering. 
He  united  a  rare  humility  with  a  brave  and 
impartial  spirit  for  his  conclusions.  He  was 
unworldly  to  the  degree  of  real  sacrifice  that 
few  men  have  for  truth's  sake. 

The  words  of  Le  Conte  which  Ward  quoted 
in  Psychic  Factors  of  Civilization  (p.  292) 
seem  to  belong  here: 

But  I  pass  these  by  with  bare  mention  to  fix 
attention  on  only  one,  viz.,  the  modern  social 
doctrine  of  human  progress.  Observe,  how- 
ever, I  mean  not  mere  natural  evolution,  or 
unconscious  progress  according  to  necessary 
law,  but  conscious  voluntary  progress  accord- 
ing to  a  free  law,  a  conscious  striving  after 
a  higher  goal,  for  the  individual  and  for  the 
race. 

[194] 


The  continuity  of  human  progress,  this 
conscious  and  voluntary  progress  of  human- 
ity, Ward  believed  would  according  to  the 
laws  of  evolution  bring  forth  tremendous 
results. 

There  is  nothing  new,  of  course,  in  the 
monistic  idea.  It  is  the  foundation  of 
HaeckePs  philosophy.  Ward,  however, 
carried  the  idea  of  continuity  somewhat 
farther  than  others.  He  dwelt  upon  the 
continuous  character  of  biological  evolution. 
Individual  organisms,  and  species,  perish, 
but  the  world  of  living  forms  remains.  This 
applies,  of  course,  to  the  human  race.  As 
Pascal  wrote:  "The  whole  succession  of  men, 
during  the  long  series  of  ages,  should  be  con- 
sidered as  One  Man,  who  continues  to  live 
and  who  continually  learns." 


[195] 


CHAPTER  VII 

"THE  WARD  ROOM" 


[197] 


Entrance  to  the  Ward  Room 


LETTER  FROM 

PROF.  H.  L.  KOOPMAN 


[199] 


THE  LIBRARY  OF  BROWN  UNIVERSITY 

PROVIDENCE,  RHODE  ISLAND 

EAST  SIDE  STATION 
H.  L.  KOOPMAN 

LIBRARIAN 

H  Nov.,  1921. 
DEAR  MRS.  CAPE: 

It  gave  me  great  pleasure  to  extend  to  you  the 
freedom  of  the  Ward  Library.  One  of  the  deep 
satisfactions  of  my  position  is  derived  from  the 
fact  that  it  makes  me  custodian  of  this  memorial 
to  my  friend,  who  was  also  through  his  books  and 
his  conversation  my  teacher.  It  is  much  that 
America  has  at  last  awoke  to  the  importance  of 
preserving  memorials  of  its  great  men  so  that  the 
future  may  have  means  of  knowing  them  as  they 
lived  and  wrought.  Of  all  the  men  who  flour- 
ished in  America  during  a  period  centering 
around  the  year  1900  whom  will  the  after  world 
wish  to  know  intimately  more  than  Dr.  Ward? 
I  hope  that  still  more  memorials  may  be  added 
to  this  collection,  rich  as  it  is.  Truly,  such  spots 
as  these 

are  pilgrim  shrines, 

Shrines  to  no  code  or  creed  confined, — 
The  Delphian  vales,  the  Palestines, 
The  Meccas  of  the  mind. 

(Halleck  on  Burns.) 

Ever  faithfully  yours, 

HARRY  L.  KOOPMAN. 
[201] 


CHAPTER  VII 

"THE  WARD  ROOM" 

CLIMBING  up  one  of  the  steepest  hills  in 
Providence,  R.  I.,  one  winds  to  the  top  by 
way  of  Waterman  Street.  Brown  University 
is  situated  on  this  hill-top  and  the  houses 
on  the  inclined  street  are  not  particularly 
noticeable,  but  to  anyone  who  has  ever  halted 
before  the  low  steps  of  Number  49  and 
realized  that  one  was  to  grasp  the  hand  of 
a  great  man,  the  memory  would  be  deeply 
engraved. 

In  this  house  Mrs.  Ward  lived  while  she 
remained  in  Providence.  The  low  old-fash- 
ioned architecture  gives  an  atmosphere  of 
quiet  and  refinement.  From  there  is  but  a 
short  walk  to  the  Campus.  One  walks  a 
few  minutes  soon  turning  the  corner  passing 
[203] 


Jf .  Harti 

the  "Carrie  Tower,"  and  then  sees  the  John 
Hay  Memorial  Library. 

It  is  here  that  since  the  death  of  Dr.  Ward 
a  room* has  been  given  to  preserve  his  books 
and  letters  and  many  unpublished  manu- 
scripts. 

One  of  the  manuscripts  entitled:  Signs  of 
the  Times  (written  1869)  opens  with  these 
words : 

Those  who  live  in  the  midst  of  great  moral  and 
intellectual  revolutions  are  seldom  aware  of  their 
existence.  It  remains  for  history  in  after  years 
to  fix  the  date  of  their  commencement  and  es- 
timate the  importance  of  their  results. 

Indeed  these  words  might  easily  be  trans- 
ferred to  the  personal  greatness  of  Lester  F. 
Ward,  simply  changing  the  words  revolutions 
to  attainments  and  existence  to  achievements. 
The  old  Morris  chair  by  the  window  is  the 
chair  which  Dr.  Ward  used  entirely  for  his 
working  hours  during  the  last  years  of  his 
life,  and  the  little  lap-board  standing  near  is 
what  he  used  as  an  adjustable  table-top, 
placing  it  across  the  arms  of  the  chair,  and 
[204] 


The  Old  Chair 


g>fcetdj 

thus  so  easily  lifted  to  wherever  he  wished  his 
writing  pages  carried. 

As  one  sits  in  the  old  Morris  chair  one 
feels  the  silent  speech  of  each  book  from  the 
shelves  all  around,  every  one  had  been 
handled  hundreds  of  times  by  him  who  never 
owned  a  book  but  to  really  use  it. 

The  extended  desk  from  the  old  typed 
bookcase  was  an  idea  of  his  own.  He  had  it 
built  so  that  he  could  more  readily  walk  to 
his  book-shelves  for  reference  while  writing. 

Dr.  Ward  often  stood  for  hours  at  work  on 
this  desk.  One  could  easily  notice  that  he 
was  a  tall  man  from  the  height  of  the  desk 
which  he  comfortably  leaned .  over  as  he 
wrote. 

The  big  six  foot  Chart  of  Knowledge  which 
had  been  unrolled  and  used  by  its  originator, 
and  had  been  copied  by  so  many  students, 
seemed  to  lean  against  the  corner  of  the  room, 
as  if  wondering  when  again  it  might  be 
triumphantly  hung  on  the  wall  to  give  of  its 
bountiful  knowledge  to  others.  Every  ob- 
ject spoke  of  service,  in  the  life  of  one  whose 
[205] 


3Le*ter  Jf . 

simplicity  of  environment  and  whose  giant 
intellect  told  a  story  of  genius  far  ahead  of 
his  day. 

Emerson  has  said  in  his  essay  on  Uses  of 
Great  Men:  "Other  men  are  lenses  through 
which  we  read  our  own  minds."  Lester 
Ward  was  a  telescope  that  drew  our  attention 
to  glorious  objects  too  far  off  for  our  little 
sight.  He  gave  us  thoughts  by  which  we 
could  feel  the  wonderful  future  that  is  possible 
for  humanity,  as  it  achieves  the  knowledge 
and  the  wisdom  whereby  to  attain  to  its  own 
powers  for  the  benefit  of  all. 

There  is  an  old  saying:  "The  great  are 
always  near, "  and  in  the  simple,  silent  room 
where  one  may  go  to  feel  the  nearness  of  the 
personal  books  and  papers  of  Dr.  Ward,  one 
is  conscious  of  the  thoughts  which  involun- 
tarily spring  up  that  he  gave  to  us  all — con- 
structive, magnetic,  purposeful,  fertile — and 
one  wonders  how  long  it  may  be  before  such 
grand  ideas  may  really  become  a  part  of 
every  mind  that  enters  a  university. 

"Each  man  is,  by  secret  liking,"  says 
[206] 


Emerson,  "connected  with  some  district  of 
nature,  whose  agent  and  interpreter  he  is,  as 
Linnaeus,  of  plants,  Huber,  of  bees;  Fries,  of 
lichens;  Van  Mons,  of  pears;  Dalton,  of 
atomic  forms;  Euclid,  of  lines;  Newton,  of 
fluxions,"  and  we  may  add  that  Ward  was 
superbly  connected  with  humans.  A  great 
man  is  a  magnet  and  draws  those  who  are 
attracted. 

As  the  years  roll  by  and  the  study  of  the 
progress  of  the  race  becomes  more  truly 
from  the  principles  underlying  it,  the  little 
room  containing  the  books  and  manuscripts 
of  Lester  Ward  may  become  as  a  shrine  for 
all  those  who  loved  his  genius. 

Thus  do  one's  thoughts  pass  while  sitting 
there  and  as  the  Chinese  Manches  spoke: 
"A  sage  is  the  instructor  of  a  hundred  ages," 
and  true  genius  never  impoverishes  but 
liberates,  and  one  senses  a  new  wealth,  a 
quality  of  assurance  that  even  though  no 
longer  in  the  flesh,  Lester  Ward  shall  forever 
inspire  men  to  think  and  to  stand  for  prin- 
ciples which  will  add  to  the  progress  and  up- 
[207] 


Hesrter 

lifting  of  Humanity.  We  close  the  door 
quietly,  and  feel  refreshed  as  if  the  memory 
of  a  great  man  had  given  us  strength  for  finer 
work  in  life. 


[208] 


Glimpses  of  the  Cosmos 

By  Lester  F.  Ward,  LL.D. 

A  Mental  Autobiography 

6  Volumes.     Octavo 

The  six  volumes  comprised  in  this  series 
contain  the  collected  essays  of  Dr.  Ward, 
representing  contributions  minor  in  compass, 
but  in  most  cases  of  first  importance  in  char- 
acter, which  have  been  brought  into  print 
during  a  series  of  years  and  which  are  here 
accompanied  by  sketches  at  once  biographical 
and  historical.  The  volumes  present  not 
merely  the  writings  of  this  distinguished 
thinker  and  author,  but  may  be  described  as 
recording,  so  to  speak,  the  evolution  of  his 
brain.  Dr.  Ward's  literary  style  is  not  only 
clear  and  dignified,  but  brilliant,  and  the 
reader  finds  himself  at  once  in  a  personal 
relation  with  the  author. 

New  York      G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons      London 


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